


Salt Year

by pukeandcry



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Career Ending Injuries, First Time, M/M, Mental Health Issues, NHL Lockout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-21 10:05:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14282589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukeandcry/pseuds/pukeandcry
Summary: Mike will never play hockey again, and he’ll never have the life he had in D.C. with Tom again, and those things were – they were all he wanted. He had exactly what he wanted in life, at least for a short time, right up until an otherwise clean hit against the boards just happened to land in a freakish, nightmare way and shatter his left leg in more places than he can even remember now.His whole life had been stolen away in a matter of seconds.And that’s exactly the kind of thing he can’t think about if he wants to get through the day.





	Salt Year

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wonderful hockey coven, who have heroically endured my months and months of whining and asking and stressing and whining about this story. I would have given up without you. Sorry for hurting your feelings along with Mike's <3
> 
> Content notes: This is a story that is primarily and explicitly about a career-ending injury, and the mental & physical trauma that comes with that. The injury occurs off-screen, and is only really described physically in its aftereffects. A lot of this story is informed by how depression can manifest and affect life and well-being (particularly interpretations of self-worth, identity, and ability), so if you're sensitive to that or other mental health issues, you may want to be cautious. Let me know if you think there's anything else I've missed that needs a particular note or if you'd like a heads up on any potential aspects!

Mike spends Thursday morning in the dim light of his kitchen, looking out over the lake and writing down a list of all the lies he’s told the most over the last year. It goes like this:

__

_
  1. Everyone who plays the game understands that this is a risk you take every time you step on the ice.
  2. It feels better today than it did yesterday.
  3. I’m just grateful that it wasn’t worse.
  4. It’s been hard, but I have a great support system that I’m leaning on.
_ 


__

__

That’s as far as he’d gotten before getting frustrated and slapping his notebook shut. The whole task felt like a waste of time, frankly, but his therapist had said it might help straighten out the shitshow of Mike’s brain, at least a little bit.

__

Well, what he’d said exactly was that it would help Mike _sort out the realities of his true emotional state versus what was required of his public persona._ But the underlying theme to pretty much every one of his therapy sessions seem to be “give Mike homework until he learns how to be a real boy again,” so he can read between the lines.

__

He’s pretty sure the main takeaway of this exercise is that he doesn’t _have_ a public persona anymore.

__

He doesn’t have lots of things he used to have. That’s fine.

__

He has some new things, too. He has the family’s secluded log cabin on the lake all to himself for as long as he wants it, for instance, and a new used truck, tricked out with extra railings to help him haul himself into it. It goes nicely with his brand new limp and the mess of pins and plates just barely holding his left knee together.

__

Mike’s hand drifts underneath the table and towards his leg before he can stop himself. He curls his fingers gently, feeling the stiff edges of the brace he wears all the time except in the shower. Underneath that he knows there’s the gnarled rope of his scar, a gut-churning nine inches long and so ugly he can’t stand to look at it. Under _that_ is the gummy mess of what used to be bone and muscle, now more metal than anything else.

__

_You can walk_ , he thinks forcefully, breathing in for a five count and out for a seven like he’s learned. _You can walk, you can walk, you can walk._

__

For a while, that outcome hadn’t necessarily been a given.

__

He forces his hand away from the brace, setting it flat on the rough wooden table. He nudges the notebook again, but doesn’t open it – he’s sick of his own cramped handwriting, and sick of his own thoughts. He reaches for his half-empty coffee mug instead, flexes his right foot on the axis of its ankle, and looks out the sliding glass door that leads to the deck.

__

He needs a plan for how to occupy himself today, since he doesn’t have PT. Going down to twice a week had felt like a reprieve at first, and then a punishment. Too much free time to fill up, and not enough things he’s capable of doing on his own.

__

If he was less stubborn, he’d probably have more options.

__

He isn’t, though, which just means he’s had to get good at figuring out what he _can_ do on his own to eat up the hours of the day, and fast.

__

He opens the notebook again, skipping over the page of today’s scribblings quick enough that he doesn’t have to reread it. There’s something nauseously vulnerable about seeing his own thoughts after they’ve escaped his brain and firmed up in ink. If it wasn’t basically homework, and not doing it wouldn’t earn him ten minutes of his therapist squinting at him and visibly drawing conclusions from his unwillingness to comply, he absolutely wouldn’t bother.

__

He finds his pen – one with a local electrician’s name and number printed on the side, the one who had wired in new lights along the deck and stairs outside so that Mike was less likely to miss his footing in the dark – and starts a new list.

__

_
  * wash sheets
  * lunch (out of bread – leftover pasta??)
  * call mom
  * groceries
  * read 1 chapter in book
  * outside - 1 hour
_

He sighs, caps his pen, and looks it over. It’s a less psychologically intrusive list than the first one of the morning, yeah, but still pretty revealing. If he can do all of those things today – and that’s a big if – it’ll wipe him the fuck out, and PT tomorrow will be an ass kicker. It’s vaguely humiliating, in a way he ought to be plenty used to by this point, but is instead still newly shitty every time.

__

He used to run miles and bench well into the hundreds; he used to work out for an hour and skate laps and take the dogs out for a walk and make a meal big enough for three people and check his Twitter all before fucking _noon_.

__

Now, on some of the bad days, making the hundred foot trip across the gentle slope of the back yard and down to the lakeshore can be too much for him.

__

He blinks hard, trying to shake himself out of it.

__

There’s not time for him to mope. Months of first-hand experience have taught him that the hardest part is getting going, and if he lets himself, he just – won’t. He’ll waste the whole day sitting at the table caught in a slimy whirlpool of loss and regret and bitterness and suddenly the sun will be setting, hours slipped past him without any sense that it’s happened.

__

The first few months had been – they’d been rough.

__

They still are, sometimes, but he’s getting better. Not good, but better.

__

-

__

Yet again, washing his bedsheets turns out to be a colossal pain in Mike’s ass. It’s not _surprising_ anymore, and there’s a reason it was the first thing on his list – getting the shittiest task done first has always been his policy – but it’s still infuriating.

__

The biggest obstacle is, obviously, the stairs. There’s a reason he only uses them twice a day: when he gets out of bed in the morning and when he goes up to bed at night. When he’s down, he’s down for the day.

__

They’re difficult enough with just his cane – trying to navigate them with his cane _and_ an armload of cumbersome king-sized sheets and blankets turns Mike into a sweaty, cursing mess.

__

His mom hates that he won’t sleep in the ground floor bedroom. She thinks he’s going to fall (he probably isn’t), and that he’s being a stubborn idiot (he probably is). He’s told her over and over, he doesn’t want to give up the view of the water from the upstairs master, and if that’s not the _complete_ truth, it’s not a lie either. He _does_ like the view, likes to fall asleep with the curtains open so that when he wakes up he can see through the floor-to-ceiling windows to the sun filtering across the water and through the trees.

__

And, he’s stubborn.

__

One side effect of his assorted daily prescriptions – painkillers and SSRIs, mostly – is that he sweats at night way more than he ever used to, waking up noticeably damp pretty much every morning. Which means that he can’t get away with letting the bedding go unwashed as long as he could have before, and besides, he’s an adult. He’s not a gross teenager in juniors anymore, barely able to take care of himself without his billet mom’s help, or even living in a perpetually foodless bachelor apartment in D.C. with – well.

__

The point is, he’s twenty seven years old, and if he was less stubborn he might let his fucked up leg take _everything_ from him, not just his career but smaller things as well, things like his ability to sleep in whichever bedroom he chooses and to not do so in squalor, but he isn’t. He can wash his fucking sheets. He _will_.

__

It only takes him about ten minutes to limp around the bed, pulling everything off and then nudging them towards the top of the stairs with his good leg and his cane. The sheets and pillowcases and quilt all tumble down towards the kitchen with a satisfying _whump_ , and he knows it’ll be a way bigger bitch getting them back up and on the bed again, but he’ll take whatever triumph he can get. He’s only mildly out of breath by the time he finally hauls them, one at a time, into the utility room and starts the washing machine.

__

He rests his forearms on top of it for a moment while it clunks to life, sighing and taking the weight off his left leg. There’s a framed cross-stitch hung on the wall above the drier that says _Bless This * &#$ing Mess_ that he stares at for a while. He thinks it must have been put there by one of his aunts, back when this was a family cabin, not his own private fortress of solitude.

__

If he had any leftover energy, he might spend some time focusing on how shitty that feels on top of everything else, basically robbing his entire extended family of their summer vacation spot – because that’s what had happened, regardless of how insistent everyone had been that he take as much time alone here to recuperate as he needed – but Mike’s too tired to really get into that particular shame spiral right now. Small miracles, he guesses.

__

There’s still a lot of shit left to do, anyway. He has to conserve his energy for making the bed later, not to mention a phone call with his mom.

__

That has been part of the bargain. He was only allowed to move into the cabin alone if he agreed to call home at _least_ twice a week, and see his parents at _least_ twice a month. His mom had promised to show up unannounced if he failed to keep up his end of it and stay there until she was convinced he was alright, and he doesn’t doubt she would.

__

He loves his mom, but he would like to avoid that. This cabin is _his_ space, the tiny part of his life where he feels less like he has to hide his limp, less like he has to tell the necessary lies.

__

Everyone really, really wants him to be better, or if not better, then to be happy. Sometimes it’s suffocating.

__

The fridge is in a sad state when he checks it, and he doesn’t bother taking the last bit of leftover pasta out of the plastic storage container before throwing it in the microwave. One less plate to wash. Conservation of energy.

__

He waits until he’s settled at the kitchen table with his food, touches his left knee for a moment, and then takes a deep breath before calling his mom. Talking to her is usually easier with a distraction, and lunch seems like a good enough one.

__

Right on schedule, he feels something ugly and self-loathing rear up in his chest for even thinking that, and it’s only worse when she picks up and says “Hi, baby,” so happily, just like always.

__

His mom is wonderful. His dad is wonderful, his siblings and nieces and nephews and friends are all kind and understanding, at least when he lets them be; Mike is the one who doesn’t know how to handle it all.

__

He gets through her standard opening line of conversation smoothly enough: how is your leg feeling today (fine), how are _you_ feeling (fine), what’s your schedule this week? (same as it always is), will he be over for dinner on Sunday? (yes). He tells her he’s doing laundry, and that he saw a loon on the lake this morning, and asks how her garden is, and then it’s smooth sailing to just eat his lunch and _uh-huh_ his way through a story about her friend’s new puppy and its resistance to being housebroken.

__

“Oh, and you have some mail here,” she tells him eventually. “Don’t let me forget to give it to you.”

__

“Mm,” he says noncommittally. He’s sure she’ll remember on her own, and in any case he’s not really in a hurry for it. All his mail goes to his parents’ house now, and while it’s not much, his agent forwards stuff pretty regularly, even if Mike isn’t technically an active client anymore. It’s just easier that way; otherwise he’d have to add driving down to the post office to his weekly list of shit to get through, since there isn’t any mail delivered to the houses this far out on the lake.

__

It’s nothing he ever particularly wants to see, anyway.

__

“And you have your next follow-up appointment scheduled, right?” his mom asks.

__

Mike tries not to be an asshole and clench his teeth at that, because it’s fair of her to ask, but he just – he hates it. He hates the way people treat him now, even if he _gets_ it. He probably _would_ skip out on his next doctor’s appointment to evaluate the scar tissue left from his latest surgery if he thought he could get away with it.

__

“Yeah,” he says, trying not to be short with her. “Couple of weeks.”

__

“Do you want me or your dad to come with you? We could pick you up, get lunch.”

__

“I’m fine,” he says, for what feels like the hundredth time during their conversation. He forces himself to find a pleasant tone of voice like his mom deserves. “Seriously, mom, thanks, but it’ll probably just be super quick anyway. I’ll call you right after, I promise.”

__

“And the truck’s running okay?”

__

“It’s–” Mike stops himself from saying _fine_ again. “Yeah. Listen, mom, sorry, the laundry just finished, I gotta go get it.”

__

He tells her loves her twice before he hangs up, and listens to the whirl of the washing machine, only halfway through its cycle.

__

His pasta is only half-eaten, but he feels twitchy and caged in, so he snaps the plastic Tupperware lid back on and balances it under his arm before hobbling towards the slider. He grabs his water bottle, the shitty airport paperback he’s currently reading, and his notebook just to be safe – he doesn’t want to make extra trips if he can avoid it – and cautiously limps out to the deck, leaving his cane inside. It’s not that far.

__

There’s a padded patio set next to the railing, and he posts up there, laying his things out carefully and deliberately on the table before easing his leg up and propping it on a second chair. He’ll be comfortable enough for a while. At least until the sheets are done.

__

-

__

He makes it through his whole to-do list in the end, with the exception of finishing a chapter in the book. It’s boring, and Mike decides he’d rather just close his eyes and listen to the wind and the lake instead. Eventually he pulls out his phone and places an order at the grocery store close to his parents – it’s a forty-five minute drive each way, but they’ll bring it out to his car, which is a necessary concession. Limping through the aisles of the smaller store in town is a fucking nightmare.

__

By the time he makes it back inside, the sun is starting to dip towards the treeline. Mike’s fucking exhausted, and he’s barely done a damn thing.

__

He has cereal for dinner in front of the TV, and forgets about the sheets in the dryer until he’s gotten all the way up the stairs and found his bed still stripped.

__

“Mother _fuck_ ,” he says out loud, wanting to kick at something. He settles for thunking his cane down too hard on the floorboards as he turns around and braces himself for another trip downstairs.

__

When he’s finally finished wrestling the duvet into place, he’s so exhausted he just flops down directly onto it, too bone-deep tired to bother getting beneath it.

__

_Didn’t even need to fucking bother, really_ , he thinks, and then he’s asleep.

__

-

__

“Hair’s getting long, Mikey,” his mom says at dinner on Sunday.

__

“I can come by and trim it sometime this week if you want,” Carol offers, passing him the platter of chicken thighs.

__

“That’s alright,” Mike says, taking one and passing it on to Jimmy on his right.

__

It’s nice of Carol to offer, and he’s let her do it a couple times before, back when he was still laid up at his parents, not nearly mobile enough to get into town to have it done and tired of not recognizing himself in the mirror. It’d gotten longer than he’d had it since he was in elementary school while he was in the hospital and the rehab center, curling down past his ears and brushing his shoulders.

__

It hasn’t gotten quite _that_ long again, though, at least not yet, and Mike’s not sure he particularly wants any extra visitors at the cabin.

__

“Thanks, though,” he adds, forcing himself to smile, because Jimmy and their mom are both glancing meaningfully at each other and pretending not to be when he catches their eyes.

__

Mike knows exactly what those expressions means – it’s classic _uh oh, Mike’s being withdrawn again, better form an action plan to make sure he doesn’t go off the deep end_ – and Jesus, he’s tired of it.

__

“I was actually thinking I’d get it done when I’m in town next week,” he adds, hoping that will appease them.

__

If they can tell he’s lying, at least they don’t call him out on it.

__

He gets through the rest of dinner without any other missteps that start anyone squinting meaningfully at him, and when his mom shoos him off into the den alone with a cup of coffee he breathes a sigh of relief.

__

He loves his family. He does. They’re just trying to take care of him, and he knows he doesn’t make it particularly easy.

__

Maybe if he was smarter he could figure out the exact right arrangement of words, the one that would make them understand how small it makes him feel to have to be babied like this; how he resents every reminder that he’s not the person he used to be, and that’s all their worry does – reminds him.

__

On his own, he can’t _forget_ – that would be pretty much impossible unless he miraculously woke up without any pain in his leg, without a limp or a cane and could go down to the rink and strap on a pair of skates again – but he can get closer, at least.

__

“Here you go,” Carol says, appearing behind him with Grace propped up on her hip. “She’s asking for you.”

__

Mike smiles for real. “She doesn’t talk yet,” he says, but reaches out his arms for the baby.

__

“Maybe not to you,” Carol says with a smile. “Me and her, though, we talk all day. Philosophy. Literature. Which uncle is her favorite.”

__

Grace babbles happily as her mom hands her over the back of the sofa and Mike balances her carefully on his good knee.

__

“Like there’s any competition,” he says, letting Grace grab onto his finger with her freakishly strong baby fist. “Say _Uncle Mike_ , Gracie,” he tells her.

__

She just smiles and drools.

__

“Keep an eye on her while I help your mom with the dishes,” Carol says – Mike appreciates that, how Carol still just tells him to do things instead of asking carefully if he’s able to – and then she’s gone.

__

“What’s up, little miss,” Mike asks Grace. It seems like she has more hair every day, and her cheeks are chubbier than ever. Mike’s biased, but she’s definitely the cutest baby in the world. “You look very nice today. The ducks are a good choice.” He’s pretty sure he bought her the duck-printed onesie she’s wearing, although he doesn’t totally remember – he’s probably responsible for about half her wardrobe, by this point.

__

“Quack,” he says to her softly, and rearranges her so she’s up against his shoulder, settling in.

__

Grace babbles at him and chews gummily on his hand, and gets drool all over his t-shirt when she tucks her face up against his chest and starts to yawn. For the first time all day, Mike feels himself truly relax.

__

_You don’t worry about me or feel sorry for me_ , Mike thinks contentedly at Grace, resting his nose on top of her head. _You just want to use me as a napkin_.

__

-

__

He flips idly through his stack of retrieved mail when he gets home, dumping most of it directly into the recycling bin. Nearly all of it is just junk, and the stuff that isn’t might as well be, for as relevant as it is to his life now. Gear catalogs, NHLPA newsletter; he doesn’t bother looking at any of that. He keeps an insurance statement, and a cooking magazine he doesn’t remember subscribing to. There’s also a hand-addressed envelope, which is – kind of fucking weird, actually. Mike’s pretty sure people don’t actually write letters anymore, right?

__

He doesn’t recognize the D.C. return address, and there’s no name, just blocky, precise blue ink, all caps.

__

Mike flips the envelope over carefully a couple of times, like it’s a letter bomb. He doesn’t think it’ll actually explode or anything, but if he had to make an educated guess, he’s probably not going to like whatever’s inside of it. His track record with the unexpected isn’t great, lately.

__

He opens it anyway.

__

Two sheets of paper torn out of a spiral-bound notebook flutter loose, and as he glances them over, Mike’s first hysterical thought is, _that fucker actually disguised his own handwriting._

__

If he didn’t vaguely want to barf, he’d be impressed at the subterfuge.

__

It’s from Tom, of course. The fake-careful block letters from the envelope are gone, and Mike would know that loopy chicken-scratch handwriting anywhere, recognizes it from half-assed grocery lists stuck to the fridge with magnets and the birthday cards Tom always got for Mike, the dumbest and noisiest ones he could find at the CVS across the street from their apartment.

__

Mike can’t believe his reaction just to some shitty fucking _handwriting_ is so visceral, sending his heart thudding too hard and settling a noxious anxiety in his guts, but apparently that’s where his life is at now.

__

_I’m not going to read it_ , Mike tells himself, already starting to read.

__

_Hi Mikey,_

__

_Wow it feels weird to be writing a letter to you. I don’t think I remember the last time I wrote anyone a letter. Sorry if I’m not very good at it._

__

_How are you? I guess that’s probably a stupid question, but I really don’t know. I tried to call you and text you but I never heard back so maybe you changed your phone number. Or maybe you just don’t want to talk and that’s fine too but I wanted to talk to you, and this was the only way I could think to do it._

__

_It’s weird, I want to talk to you all the time but now that I’m writing this I don’t know exactly what to say. I think I miss talking to you and this is more like talking at you, you know? If you even read this, I mean. Maybe you won’t get it or you’ll just throw it away once you do but I’m still going to write this down and just hope you do read it, okay?_

__

_I guess what I mostly want to say is that I don’t want you to think I forgot about you, because I think about you all the time. You pretty much disappeared after everything, and I understand why, I think, you were pretty messed up I know, but I guess maybe I’m kind of messed up too? Not in the same way obviously, but the dumb thing is that I still expect to see you basically every day, and sometimes I go to ask you a question or tell you something and get surprised that you aren’t there. That’s probably stupid._

__

_I don’t know if you want to hear all this but I just needed to tell you. I’m sorry if you don’t. But also I’m kind of not because I was watching Sportscenter yesterday and I didn’t know it was coming obviously but they showed the hit. And I’d seen it before, but not in a while and I didn’t want to watch it again but I did, all three times they showed it, and I don’t know, it felt like I was seeing it for the first time and I wanted to cry or hit someone and I guess I thought, if that’s how it makes me feel… I don’t know. I don’t know what I mean I guess._

__

_I miss you Mikey, and I think about you a lot. I just wanted to make sure you knew that. I’d really like to see you or at least talk to you, so if you wanted to call me my number is still the same. Or you could write too. Whatever you want._

__

_I hope you’re doing okay._

__

_\- Tom Wilson_

__

Mike reads it through twice without meaning to, his palms going clammy as he does. He sits down at the kitchen table, rubbing his bad knee idly through the brace and trying to breathe steadily.

__

It’s a sweet, if kind of stupid letter. It makes him want to throw up.

__

The thing is, Mike works _really_ hard just to get through each day, and there are rules he has to follow to be able to do so. The strictest rule is to try his hardest to forget about the things he’s lost, and Tom and hockey are right at the top of that list. Shit, they’re so entwined they’re basically the same thing, and that somehow makes it worse, the loss greater than the sum of its parts. Mike will never play hockey again, and he’ll never have the life he had in D.C. with Tom again, and those things were – they were all he wanted. He had exactly what he wanted in life, at least for a short time, right up until an otherwise clean hit against the boards just happened to land in a freakish, nightmare way and shatter his left leg in more places than he can even remember now.

__

His whole life had been stolen away in a matter of seconds.

__

And that’s exactly the kind of thing he can’t think about if he wants to get through the day.

__

Except now, he can’t stop. He can’t stop thinking about Tom and the team and the hit and Tom _watching_ the hit, about _anyone_ watching the hit, and Mike is furious and nauseous and wants to cry or punch something or both, and he fucking hates Tom for doing this to him. For not understanding the isolation chamber Mike has _had_ to construct around himself, and fuck, on top of that all, he misses Tom so fucking _much_.

__

He doesn’t know what the fuck to do.

__

If he was his old self, he would go for a run. He’d run and run until he couldn’t breathe and the panic swirling around inside him subsided, or at least he got too exhausted to hear it anymore.

__

If he was his old self, he wouldn’t need to.

__

Mike grits his teeth, inhales, exhales. He wants to swat the water glass that’s on the kitchen counter off and listen to it shatter, to crumple up Tom’s letter and maybe set it on fire, wants to jump out of his own skin and his fucked up body that he can’t ever escape.

__

And like always, he gets caught between those desires, wanting to do so much and not able to do any of it, so he just folds the pages of the letter together again, tucks them under the glass, and lurches to the fridge and finds a beer.

__

It takes him a while to precariously make his way out the back door, down the steps and across the yard until he hits the small sandy stretch of shoreline, especially without his cane. The sun is mostly set and it’s getting dark but he plunks down heavily in the cool sand anyway, carefully stretching the muscles of his bad leg with his hands and folding it enough to sit comfortably as best he can.

__

It’s going to be hell on his knee if he stays down here very long, especially since he’ll have to make his way back up to the house, and back upstairs, but Mike just – he’s not ready to be inside yet. The cabin might be his for now, but it can still feel too claustrophobic, and if he’s here, he can just drink his beer and stare out at the water, listen to the birds and the susurrations of the water and occasional bursts of human noise from across the lake and pretend.

__

He’s not even sure what he’s pretending anymore. Anything other than this, he guesses.

__

-

__

Maybe it’s how long he sits out on the cold sand – well after dark, until he’s shivering – or maybe it’s just dumb fucking luck, but the next day is shitty.

__

His leg hurts way worse than usual when he wakes up, the dull ache he’s used to ratcheted up a notch and interrupted by sharp radiants of pain shooting out from his knee all the way down to his foot and up to his hip, and he can barely move even with his cane. It feels more like it’s been days since his injury, not months, and Mike knows this happens sometimes, will probably _keep_ happening indefinitely, but that doesn’t mean he hates it any less.

__

Everything he’d meant to do for the day gets pushed aside; he only manages to get himself down to the kitchen before feeling like he’s on the edge of a fucking meltdown. He thinks he probably ought to call someone, have his mom come over to at least help him figure out what he needs to get through the day, but the thought only makes him feel worse.

__

Especially when he catches a glimpse of Tom’s fucking letter, right where he left it, folded up and stuck beneath a glass.

__

He grits his teeth, finds a bottle of water, his painkillers, and his phone, and carefully trudges to the sofa. It takes twenty minutes for his serious business, bad day opiates to kick in, and another ten for him to finally believe they’re helping enough to unclench his teeth. His head is going to start to swim, soon, but at least he won’t be hungry. He doesn’t think he’d be willing to take on the twenty steps to the kitchen even if he was.

__

He knows from experience that this will be his whole day, eaten up in a haze of pain and pills and distorted time. Right on schedule, he starts to feel loopy halfway through an episode of whatever he’d landed on – some DIY house projects show – and by the third, he’s asleep.

__

His phone buzzes later, and Mike doesn’t bother to look at it, but the sun has shifted, so he figures it must be afternoon. There’s a new couple resurfacing floors and pretending to bicker on tv. 

__

His leg is screaming again; he takes another pill, waits for it to kick in, wash, rinse, repeat.

__

When it’s dark out, he manages to make his way into the kitchen to find a granola bar, but realizes there’s no way he’ll make it up the stairs to bed. Not with how shaky and weak he feels, all fucked up and woozy.

__

The ground floor bedroom is cozy and wood-paneled with a soft bed and a nice quilt, and when Mike carefully lifts himself up into it, exhausted despite sleeping all day, he fucking hates it all.

__

-

__

The bad day is only that, fortunately: a day. For the rest of the week, Mike starts to feel – not _better_ , there isn’t really a _better_ anymore, but the normal kind of bad at least. He only has to spend the one night in the downstairs bedroom, and by the time he has his follow-up doctor’s appointment two weeks later, he’s back to moving around about as well as he ever does now.

__

Which isn’t really a high bar, but his therapist is always talking about how the only thing he can measure himself against is his own self, at this moment. Not anyone else, not himself last year, just the Latts of here and now.

__

Mike might not be great at doing that in _practice_ , but he at least tries to force himself to keep it in mind.

__

The day of his doctor’s appointment is sunny and hot, a movie-set kind of summer day, and Mike is surprised to realize that as he drives into town with the truck’s windows down, humming along to the radio, he feels better than he has in a while. He’s almost afraid to think about it too directly, like maybe he’ll jinx it, but he tries to just enjoy the unfamiliar lightness of optimism while he can.

__

He’s not expecting a miracle or anything. He’s not stupid. It’s just – it’s easier to hope for at least a little bit of good news right now.

__

He’s smiling to himself even as he parks in the handicapped spot outside of the doctor’s office.

__

The mood doesn’t last, though. He tenses up on instinct as Dr. Hassan looks over his leg, the sense memory of too many doctor’s offices and exam rooms clamping down on him as soon as he settles on the table, and he can tell pretty quickly by her expression that whatever she’s seeing isn’t great.

__

By the time Dr. Hassan is peeling off her sterile gloves and telling him he can put his brace back on, any lingering contentedness is shot to shit.

__

“There’s much more scar tissue built up than we’d ideally be seeing at this point,” she tells him, carefully schooling her expression back to neutral. “Combined with the nerve damage – which we knew about – that’s what’s keeping your range of motion so limited, and likely spurring the relapses of acute pain when you overexert yourself. I’m guessing stairs are still a considerable difficulty?”

__

Mike grits his teeth and nods.

__

“Well, I won’t tell you again to limit your use of them.” The last time she’d done that, Mike had told her that “wasn’t possible,” which, in the technical sense, wasn’t precisely true.

__

“What that means is that we’ll have to keep you going with physical therapy longer than anticipated. We can talk about another surgery further down the road to abate some of the scar tissue. And,” she says, “it also means it’s likely that our original prediction of how it will ultimately heal was probably somewhat off base. It’s too soon to tell, of course, but it’s possible that you won’t regain unassisted mobility.”

__

She says it all carefully, neutral without being pitying, as gentle as possible without sugar-coating it. Mike wonders if that’s something they teach you in medical school, like the doctor equivalent of media training – how to tell a patient their leg is actually fucked up even worse than they originally thought, and that they might never be able to get rid of their cane after all.

__

There’s more he tries to focus on, concerns about emerging hairline fractures and damaging strain on his good side from favoring it too much, but he finds himself just nodding along as she talks, trying to swallow down the feeling of disappointment. He _shouldn’t_ feel disappointed, because he hadn’t allowed himself to expect anything else, to _hope_ for anything better. That was his plan. That was supposed to protect him, and the knowledge that that, on top of everything else, has failed him makes him have to squeeze his eyes shut for a long moment after the doctor shakes his hand and closes the exam room door behind her.

__

-

__

As promised, he calls his mom afterward, although not immediately. He thinks he deserves some down time to think about what Dr. Hassan had told him, at least for the duration of the drive home. Even once he gets back to the cabin, he can’t bring himself to ease himself out of the truck, and sits in parked in the driveway until he’s so tangled up that he punches the steering wheel.

__

That doesn’t help, shockingly.

__

“It’s fine, mom,” he says when he flatly recounts Dr. Hassan’s words to her ten minutes later. He’s still in the fucking truck.

__

“Baby,” his mom sighs sadly. “I know it must be hard to hear. You’re allowed to be upset.”

__

“I know,” he interrupts. He can’t – he can’t do this with her. He has a therapist. He talks to his therapist about how _valid his feelings are_ or what the fuck ever specifically so that he _doesn’t_ have to get into it with people like his mom. He needs to get her to back off, because he’s about to yell or cry or do something shitty. “Mom, look, I’m not stupid, okay? I knew I wasn’t gonna go in there and have her say, ‘Oh, hey, looks like actually you’re fine, our bad! Call your agent because you’ll be good to go for training camp next year.’ It’s... it’s gonna be fucked up forever. It doesn’t matter if it’s a little more fucked up than we thought.”

__

There’s a heavy silence from his phone, and he immediately feels awful. “Sorry for swearing,” he mumbles as an afterthought.

__

“You’re allowed to swear,” she finally says after a long moment. Her voice sounds like she’s trying not to cry too. Fuck, Mike’s such an asshole.

__

They don’t say much to each other after that. Mike just – he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, or _think_ about it anymore, so he says goodbye, promises he’ll be there for dinner soon, and that he loves her. He _does_.

__

He knows most people wouldn’t put up with his shit like she does.

__

For her sake, he makes himself finally get out of the truck and start moving.

__

What other option does he have?

__

-

__

His life, small as it is now, still doesn’t give him much time to sulk. Mike has an appointment with his PT to reevaluate their plan of attack two days later, and his therapist sees him afterward, because he figures he might as well just – deal with it all in one fell swoop.

__

He makes his lists in the morning and does his best to get through them every day. He doesn’t let himself read WebMD articles about traumatic knee injury recovery rates or anything about hockey on his laptop and doesn’t forget to take his cane when he takes short walks up and down the dirt road. He drives into town when he needs to do, grits his teeth and does what he needs doing, and doesn’t let himself think too hard about anything.

__

It’s as good a way as any to get through the days. It’s a routine.

__

When Mike gets out of the shower on a morning totally free of appointments, knee brace carefully refitted just below the ripped hem of his cut-off sweatshorts, there’s a text on his phone from Carol.

__

_Hey Mike, I’m coming over! Grace wants to see you and I have half a coffee cake I need to pawn off on someone. 11 good for you?_

__

It’s already 10:30, which means Carol has probably already left, so even if he’d wanted to say no, it would be too late. He changes into a real pair of shorts and a polo shirt and does his best to straighten up the house before they arrive; he knows Carol probably doesn’t care if he has a bunch of stray Gatorade bottles on the ground next to the sofa and a sink full of dishes, but it’d be nice to maintain the illusion that he’s at least semi-capable of looking after himself.

__

He’s opening up the windows to let the breeze in when he hears her car’s tires crunching up the gravel driveway, and a moment later, a car door and then Grace’s shriek. It makes Mike smile reflexively.

__

“Take one of these, please!” Carol says when he meets them at the door, a tray covered in tin foil in one hand and Grace wriggling in the other. “Also, hi! Good to see you.”

__

Mike automatically reaches for the plate – it’s smaller and less alive and therefore easier to hold, especially with his cane to deal with too, but Grace yells incoherently and tries to fling herself out of Carol’s arms at him, so he redirects and scoops her up. She laughs and immediately starts trying to put her hand in his mouth.

__

“Good to see you guys too.” A black fly buzzes past his nose and he tries to shoo it away before it follows them inside.

__

“Sorry that we’re kind of unannounced.” Carol makes herself at home in the kitchen, opening up cupboards and drawers until she finds the plates and cuts them both a slice of cake. They eat at the kitchen stools, Carol buzzing around comfortably, leaving Mike to bounce Grace on his lap. 

__

When they’re finished, Carol sets their plates in the sink and nudges open the slider.

__

“C’mon, let’s go enjoy the sun.”

__

They take Grace down to the lake and let her sit in the sand, which she immediately starts shoveling into her mouth. “Yuck, Gracie. Don’t eat it,” Mike says, trying to intercept it before she swallows too much.

__

The weather is unnaturally perfect again, warm but with enough puffy clouds dotting the sky to occasionally drift in front of the sun and keep it from getting uncomfortable. The lake is still, and Mike guesses it’s probably more than warm enough to float in comfortably if he wanted to.

__

“This is nice,” Carol says, stretching her legs out so her feet just splash into the water. “I always forget how peaceful it is up here.”

__

“Yeah,” Mike says. For a moment his brain can’t help but find all the barbs that might be lurking in that – that Mike has selfishly taken over the family’s spot for his own; that the only place he can comfortably exist now is one where he’s basically entirely alone, his nearest neighbor on the other side of the lake; that he’s basically a spoiled brat on a long vacation – but he forces himself to shake it off as best he can. Those things might be _true_ , but that’s not what Carol means. He knows that; it’s not fair to ascribe his own hangups to her.

__

His therapist would probably be proud.

__

He forces himself to smile, and they spend the next twenty minutes catching up on family stuff and trying to stop Grace from vacuuming up the entire beach.

__

“I actually had a question to ask you,” Carol says eventually, too casually to actually _be_ casual.

__

Mike immediately tenses, bracing himself for something about his knee, or his feelings, any of the things he doesn’t want to talk about, but can’t do much more than nod at Carol to go ahead.

__

“It’s about this gross little sand-eater, actually,” she says, redirecting Grace’s gritty fist away from her mouth without missing a beat. “I’m going back to work again soon. Just a couple days a week, you know, nothing major, but it’ll be good. I’m ready to talk to grown-ups again.”

__

“Oh, very cool,” Mike says, meaning it. “That sounds like it’ll be nice.”

__

“I think so too. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love being with Gracie, but I think we’re both going a little crazy being stuck in the house together all day. It gets a little isolating, you know? Plus, weirdly, I miss working.” She shrugs happily.

__

Mike nods, and tries not to think too deeply about what _his_ life must look like to Carol, if she’s feeling isolated even with Grace and Jimmy and all their friends to keep her company.

__

“But that means I gotta do something with _you_ , doesn’t it?” Carol says to Grace, leaning in to kiss her on the nose, before turning back to Mike. “So that’s what I wanted to ask you about. We could always find a daycare, but we were thinking – would you maybe want to watch her instead?”

__

Mike really hadn’t been expecting _that_. “Uh,” he says dumbly. “Me?”

__

“You don’t have to, of course. Like, seriously, if it would be an imposition, I understand, so please don’t feel obligated. But you’re good with her, and she knows you and loves you, and it just seemed like a good fit.”

__

She doesn’t say anything else, although Mike can make some guesses as to what else is probably motivating the offer. How Mike doesn’t have anything else going on; Mike has so much free time; Mike could use the distraction.

__

The thing is, while those things rankle him, they’re all _true_. They’re true and acting like they’re not just makes him an idiot, or a coward. Maybe that’s why he finds himself suddenly, fiercely wanting to say yes.

__

“Are you sure I’d be, like. A good choice? You know, with...” he asks instead. Carol just raises an eyebrow at him skeptically, and he doesn’t want to say it, but apparently she’s going to make him, so he gestures down at the brace on the knee.

__

“Don’t be dumb,” she says, fondly. “Pretty sure you can keep up with a six month old.”

__

“Okay,” Mike says, trying to stop himself from feeling embarrassed by sheer force of will. “I mean, yeah, I’d love to. You know I love Gracie. I just, you know. Want to make sure _you’re_ okay with it too.” _That you’re not just asking because you feel sorry for me_ , he thinks without saying.

__

“Mikey, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you’re basically a baby whisperer,” Carol says, knocking her shoulder against his. “She’s calmer and happier with you than with pretty much anybody else, and you never act like she’s this weird alien creature like some of Jimmy’s friends do with her. And you’re constantly spoiling her. You’re, like, a dream nanny, basically.”

__

Mike doesn’t know about _that_ , but he smiles.

__

“It’d make me happy knowing she’s with her favorite uncle and not some stranger,” Carol adds.

__

“Oh, jeez, pulling out the favorite uncle card.” Mike smiles harder. “Alright, yeah. I mean, we might have to figure out how to make it work, but…” 

__

“I’m in if you are,” Carol says. “Jimmy too.”

__

In the sand in front of them, Grace flaps her chubby arms and then tips over sideways, laughing the whole way. Mike leans down and sits her back up.

__

“Alright,” he says, more to himself than to Carol, and then he says it again, louder. “Yeah, alright. Sounds like you and me are gonna have some fun, huh Gracie?”

__

Grace seems convinced, at least.

__

-

__

His first day alone with Grace is only a little terrifying. She wails like she’s dying for ten very long minutes after Carol drives away, during which time Mike rocks her in his arms and is convinced he’s made a terrible mistake that will end up traumatizing a child, possibly for life, and then like a switch has been flipped, she stops suddenly. She’s still red-faced and covered in tears and snot, but apparently is now content to grab at Mike’s chin while he gets them settled on the couch.

__

It’s kind of fascinating. Mike wonders, not for the first time, what goes on in her head. Did she just sort of accept that her mom isn’t here, and figure she ought to make the best of it? Did she remember Mike, remember that he’s safe and worth trusting? Did she just forget why she was crying in the first place?

__

“I dunno,” he says out loud to her. “Maybe this is why I’m not the therapist, eh?”

__

It’s nice to have someone he can talk to, even – or maybe _especially_ – one that doesn’t understand him. The solitude of the cabin might have been its big draw, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t days when Mike finds himself talking through his every thought and activity out loud just to hear the sound of a human voice. It feels substantially less weird now that Grace is here to listen to him.

__

Plus, he’s pretty sure that’s a thing – talking out loud to babies. It’s good for, like, their language development or something. He knows he’s heard Carol narrating just about everything she sees to Grace before, from what a tree is and what color its leaves are to what she’s putting in the cart at the grocery story.

__

He’s not about to let Gracie fall behind on his watch.

__

“Alright, buddy,” he tells her seriously. “What’s our plan? Blocks first, or lunch?”

__

She babbles nonsense, and Mike decides she’s telling him blocks.

__

“Good call,” he agrees. “Get those motor skills going.”

__

It only takes a few awkward minutes and one painful jar of his bad knee to get them both settled on the floor, the play mat and soft cube full of toys that Carol had delivered the week before waiting for them.

__

“See?” he tells Grace as she tries to eat a yellow wooden triangle. “We got everything we need here.”

__

-

__

He relies so heavily on routine that adding Grace into the mix is a blessing. Suddenly he not only has something else on his calendar adding structure to the week, but it’s something he actually _enjoys_. The regular appointments, the dinners with his parents, the phone calls to his mom, those are all a useful framework to keep him from spiralling too badly, but knowing that three times a week Gracie is going to be so psyched to see him that she throws her head back and does that maniac baby laugh thing when Carol passes her off to Mike – that’s something else, something special. Something truly _good_. It makes all her diaper explosions and fatigue-screaming more than tolerable.

__

And it is pretty neat to see their particular bond growing. Even after just a week and a half, Grace plainly ranks Mike up there with her mom and dad in terms of favorite people. When she’s cranky at their next family dinner, crying about the indignities of being forced to eat mashed peas or something, she reaches to _Mike_ for comfort, which just about knocks him on his ass with love.

__

She sits curled against his chest for the rest of the meal, falling asleep while Mike occasionally leans down to kiss her fuzzy head.

__

Jimmy catches him by the elbow as everyone stands up from the table, Grace finally handed off to Carol so she can put her down in the crib in the guest room.

__

“Hey Mikey. Come sit out front with me after we’re done, yeah?” he asks. “We can have a drink, catch up a little.”

__

That feels distinctly ominous, but Mike can’t exactly say no, so he just nods. “Uh, yeah, alright.”

__

He tries not to let it loom over him too much as Jimmy goes out back to help their dad scrape off the grill – Jimmy’s just his brother, after all. Mike can’t be, like, in trouble with him.

__

If Mike takes his time helping clear the plates away, then that’s just because he has to carry them one at a time.

__

But eventually his mom shoos him away, so he heads out to the patio where Jimmy’s waiting, carrying a bottle of beer in one hand and tucking another one under this arm so he can lean on his cane. When they’re settled on the bench, he pops them both open on the railing and hands one to Jimmy.

__

“What’s up?” he asks. Hopefully it doesn’t come out too suspicious.

__

“What, I can’t just have a beer with my brother?” Jimmy asks. Mike gives him a look, and he laughs. “Yeah, okay, fine. Ulterior motive. I just wanted to see how you’re doing with, y’know. Everything that’s going on.”

__

Mike blinks. “With, like. My leg?”

__

Jimmy makes a weird face at him, like Mike made a bad joke or something.

__

“I mean with the hockey season coming up.” He shrugs casually. It comes across practiced. “You know what all the talk is like right now.”

__

“The talk?” Mike asks. He _doesn’t_ know, makes it a point not to know, but he can’t help how his curiosity is piqued anyway.

__

“You really didn’t hear?” Jimmy asks, clearly surprised.

__

“No, dude.” Mike’s starting to get annoyed. He doesn’t want to get roped into a fucking riddle about whatever it is.

__

Jimmy looks like he maybe regrets bringing it up, though, because he hesitates.

__

“Whatever it is, you know I’m gonna hear it eventually,” Mike says, trying not to sound frustrated, even though he’s about an inch away from it.

__

Jimmy nods. “Yeah, alright. It’s just that there’s talk there’s probably gonna be a lockout.”

__

Mike is quiet, if only because he’s learned to keep his reactions internal by now.

__

“It’s just a rumor, obviously,” Jimmy says. “You never know.”

__

“You never know,” Mike repeats. It’s funny, how both of them clearly aren’t saying the _but_. But if it’s gotten this far, it’s almost inevitable. You never know, except sometimes, you do.

__

They sit in silence after that, the sun starting to set. Mike focuses on that, the way the sky is going orange then pink then red. It’s easier to fix on than the too-tight feeling in his chest that he’s trying not to let take over.

__

The street lamps are coming on by the time Jimmy drains his beer and stands up to head back inside.

__

He stops at the door, though, and turns to look at Mike. “Was it – is it okay that I told you?” He sounds genuinely unsure. For whatever reason, that’s what softens Mike a little, more able to settle his breath.

__

“Yeah, man. It’s okay.”

__

Jimmy nods. “I couldn’t decide if it would be weirder if I did or weirder if I didn’t, you know?”

__

Mike surprises himself by laughing. “Dude, welcome to the club. I feel like that literally all the time.”

__

-

__

When the news breaks a week later, Mike isn’t taken totally by surprise, which is a plus. Even so, it’s jarring, after so long spent carefully avoiding everything to do with hockey. If he was smarter, he’d stop clicking on headlines on his iPad, stop spiralling through the speculative articles and variations on headlines all saying the same thing. The season is officially delayed, and Mike can read between the lines of the wildly tense press conference well enough to know that it’ll be a fucking miracle if anything happens by December at the absolute earliest.

__

The ugly, secret part of Mike feels nastily satisfied. If he hadn’t had time to think about it, to brace himself for something like this happening, he would probably just feel upended and freaked out, but now he thinks – well, good.

__

If he can’t have hockey, why should anyone else get to?

__

Maybe he ought to be even more sympathetic now. He’s an adult, and moreover he knows first-hand how disorienting it is to have your whole life centered around this one thing – the ebb and flow of the season, of the game – and then suddenly, it’s gone, along with all the structure it offers.

__

He isn’t, though.

__

Maybe that’s just another part of him that’s gone. The part that remembers how not to be an asshole.

__

He shakes his head, trying to jolt himself out of it.

__

His knee feels okay today. It’s sunny outside, he has groceries in the fridge, and he thinks he and Grace might take a little walk when she gets there. Those are all good, solid things to hold onto. He doesn’t have time to think about the lockout.

__

The NHL isn’t his life anymore. Grace is. The cabin is. Getting through the days is. And he can’t do that if he sits in the kitchen feeling shitty about hockey.

__

He makes a quick list for the day – mostly just to take Grace for the walk, try to get her to nap, and think of something to make for dinner.

__

When he hears Carol’s car in the driveway, he smiles.

__

This is enough for him now. It has to be.

__

-

__

As far as company goes, Grace’s suits Mike just fine. She’s non-judgmental so long as Mike responds quickly enough to her shouting when she’s hungry or bored. She’s not very mobile, so Mike can keep up with her, since the most she does is sit around and sometimes roll over. And she hasn’t learned what pity is yet, so she can’t aim it at Mike.

__

She fits nicely into his routine, and he starts to schedule his appointments and trips into town around her and Carol, making sure he’s available whenever they need him.

__

It’s been a while since he’s been needed, and it might not be much, now, but it’s something. He feels more useful than he has in months.

__

Tuesdays rapidly become Mike’s favorite day of the week, because Mondays are therapy, which means he has nowhere to be until PT on Thursday afternoon. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are all Grace, and he starts thinking up things they can do together when he’s making his lists in the morning.

__

Today’s objectives are pretty simple. Lunch, read the book Grace is obsessed with at the moment – a chunky cardboard one with a mirror on the very last page that fascinates her – and maybe go outside for a while. He thinks maybe if the weather stays nice, later this week he’ll try and put her into the aggressively cute baby swimsuit and puddlejumper Carol had left with him and take Grace down to the lake to splash around.

__

Grace is halfway through eating her jar of pureed sweet potatoes – she seems wildly unimpressed by them, given how she’s fussing and dodging the plastic green spoon and shrieking whenever Mike gets it close to her mouth – and Mike is trying to remember where the baby sunscreen is when he hears tires crunching on the drive.

__

“Oh, hey, sounds like your mom’s early,” he tells Grace, reaching over to wipe away a smear of orange on her chin with his thumb. “Can you at least take, like, a full bite so I don’t look totally incompetent for her?”

__

Grace seals her mouth shut in response. Mike sighs.

__

There’s a knock at the door, and Mike shouts “It’s open,” towards the front of the house, not wanting to have to get Gracie out of the high chair yet. He’s determined to win the war of the sweet potatoes, but Carol knocks again, so he wipes off his hands and lifts Grace up onto his hip.

__

“This isn’t over,” he tells her seriously.

__

There’s a third knock that sounds almost hesitant as they get closer to the door, and Mike can’t figure out why Carol isn’t just letting herself in like usual until he turns the knob.

__

It isn’t Carol.

__

Tom is there. Tom is on the doorstep, hands stuck in the pockets of his shorts, looking sort of sheepish. His huge extended-trip suitcase is sitting behind his legs, and Mike doesn’t even know what to do with _that_ , so he just – ignores it.

__

Tom is there, and Mike’s instinct is to shut the door in his face.

__

He doesn’t. He doesn’t do _anything_ ; he just stands there uselessly, weight on his right leg and Grace in his arms, frozen stupidly.

__

A sad, punishing part of him, he has to admit, has imagined this. He’d probably have to be a robot not to, but it still feels galling to have it thrown back in his face like this, without warning – that late at night, sometimes he couldn’t help but think, _what if Tom came here to me and everything was okay again_.

__

He hadn’t been stupid enough to think that was actually possible, though.

__

It still isn’t, anyway. Tom is here, looking out of place and blinking fast at Mike, but that doesn’t change anything. Mike’s leg is still busted, and nothing is fixed, except now he feels – what, angry? Something like it, at least.

__

“What are you doing here?” he asks after a long moment, when it becomes obvious Tom isn’t going to explain his presence.

__

“Uh,” Tom says. He shifts his weight thoughtlessly, and Mike tries not to look too hard at him. “I came to see you?”

__

Mike sighs.

__

He doesn’t know what to say, what to do, so he just stands there, squinting at Tom, trying to sort out the picture he makes there in the shade of the trees.

__

This was supposed to be his space, his refuge, and yet, here’s Tom.

__

Tom just waits, a nervous look on his face, and Mike doesn’t know how long they would have ended up standing there in the world’s most awkward face-off if not for Grace starting to fuss. But after a minute she starts to squirm and yell in Mike’s arms, and suddenly it’s like Tom is noticing her for the first time, because his eyes go wide and his eyebrows do that confused thing they always do, and Mike can basically _see_ the wheels turning in Tom’s head as Grace works herself up into a wail, and he just – he can’t process it all.

__

He turns and limps back into the house, trying to soothe the baby as best he can.

__

“If you’re coming in, close the door,” he shouts over his shoulder, not looking back. He hopes it comes out gruff instead of completely frazzled.

__

Mike forces himself to focus exclusively on Grace, on getting her inside and bouncing her the way she likes. He tries so hard not to hear the door clicking shut quietly, and the sound of Tom carefully taking off his flip flops, the thunk-thunk of his bag rolling over the threshold.

__

He tries _so_ hard, but it’s still as loud as gunfire.

__

He gets Grace’s face wiped free of lingering sweet potato mush, and shuffles them over to the changing mat he has tucked in a corner of the living room, his back purposefully to the rest of the house. Tom is behind him, somewhere, being conspicuously quiet.

__

Gracie fusses and kicks her legs through wrestling her into a new diaper, but by the time Mike’s got her chubby legs stuck back through her playsuit and has offered her the right plush toy – the rabbit, today – she’s downgraded from _crying_ to simply _shouting_ , and eventually he has nothing left to do besides stand up.

__

It’s a process, as always.

__

Tom hasn’t disappeared. He’s in the kitchen, looking too big for the space and like he’s trying to shrink himself into the island, out of place and uncomfortable.

__

His hair is long again. He’s wearing a t-shirt Mike recognizes, the blue one with the pocket. He looks both familiar and wildly, incongruously wrong in Mike’s house.

__

“It’s almost naptime,” he finally says, because that’s the only thing he feels capable of addressing at the moment. Grace is back in his arms, slapping him with the stuffed bunny and kicking his hip, and Tom’s staring at her in a way that looks a little thunderstruck. “That’s probably why she’s cranky. ”

__

“Shit,” Tom says, in an awed kind of way, and then immediately corrects himself. “I mean, shoot, sorry. Uh. Is she… I mean, like. She’s yours?”

__

Mike crinkles his face up. “What? _No_ , Jesus. She’s Jimmy’s. I babysit her.”

__

To be fair, Grace had been born after – after everything. Tom’s never met her; they’ve never talked about her, beyond vague conversations about how psyched Mike was to be an uncle, back when she was only just a concept. But still, what the fuck? That doesn’t even make sense, timing-wise. Like, when would Mike have had time to meet someone, get her pregnant, and have the kid, let alone have the kid be six months old by now, all without Tom knowing anything about it, and – Jesus, the whole thing is making him feel hysterical.

__

“Oh,” Tom says. Mike doesn’t know if he’s imagining something like relief in his voice, there. “Yeah, um. That makes more sense, sorry. I just…”

__

Whatever he _just_ , though, he doesn’t say. Instead he just takes off his backwards baseball cap and runs his hand through his hair, shrugging apologetically.

__

“Okay,” Mike says slowly, eyeing Tom like he would an unfamiliar dog. What the fuck is he supposed to do with this? With _any_ of it?

__

They stand there like that, just _looking_ at each other, clearly both unsure of what to do. Mike doesn’t know what to say, and he’s not going to be the first one to try.

__

Grace kicks him again and lets out another shout.

__

It’s like the noise startles Tom into action, because he suddenly takes a jolting step forward, and then stops. “Listen, I know I’m, uh, kind of showing up out of nowhere here, but I… I didn’t know what else to do, man,” he says, holding out his palms like that explains anything.

__

“Why do you have a suitcase?” It’s sharper than Mike means for it to come out, but frankly he’s alright with that. Tom is just – _here_ , in Mike’s _house_ , unannounced and with a big fucking suitcase, and if Mike looks at that information too square on he knows he’s going to lose it, to absolutely panic, and he can’t do that, not with Tom looking at him with his _face_ and Gracie in his arms.

__

“Well, I mean,” Tom hedges. “You, uh. You know there’s a lockout, right?”

__

Mike swallows hard. _Breathe in for five, breathe out for seven_.

__

“Yes,” he manages eventually. “I know.”

__

“So – look, I mean. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was coming, but. You probably would have told me no, right?”

__

Which is – true. Mike can’t bring himself to confirm it, but it turns out his silence is pretty telling anyway.

__

“Yeah, so. I wanted to see you. I, uh. I don’t know if you got the letter I wrote you?” Tom looks nervous and hopeful at the same time, and he’s doing that thing where he hunches his shoulders as if that could ever make him look small.

__

“I have to put her down,” Mike says abruptly, glancing at Grace.

__

“Oh, sure, yeah. Of course. Do you…” Tom makes an abortive gesture that must mean _do you want help?_

__

“No,” Mike says too quickly, and then turns towards the guest bedroom where Grace’s pack and play is set up. He shuts the door behind them, and tries not to burn with embarrassment, acutely aware of Tom watching him limp as he goes.

__

-

__

Maybe it’s cowardly to hide himself in the bedroom, but that’s what Mike does. He tucks Gracie in and keeps an eye on her until she settles, and then perches on the bed himself. He’s not ready to go back out there. Tom can… whatever. He invited himself, he can figure this out himself.

__

Mike just stays there, palms resting on his knees, his wheels spinning frantically with no real traction, until he hears the front door opening almost an hour later.

__

He lets himself hope, for one stupid second, that it’s Tom letting himself out, that he’s going back to wherever he came from and Mike can write this all off as a weird hallucination or something, but then he hears Carol’s voice from the hall, too indistinct to really make out.

__

She sure doesn’t sound surprised that Tom’s in Mike’s house, though.

__

Mike breathes in carefully, and opens the door. Tom is sitting on a kitchen stool, perched awkwardly. The stool looks cartoonishly small beneath him.

__

Mike doesn’t know what the fuck to do.

__

“Hey, Mikey,” Carol says smoothly, as if this is all fully normal. “The monster napping?”

__

Grace barely wakes up through Carol gathering her up and strapping her into the car seat, and Mike keeps trying to communicate to her with his eyebrows – _what the fuck do you know about this_ is the gist of it – but she’s either not seeing it or really good at pretending, because she just kisses his cheek, waves goodbye to Tom, and breezes out with Grace.

__

And then it’s just Mike and Tom.

__

“How’d you know where I am?” Mike asks finally. One of them has to say _something_ , and Tom has just been _looking_ at him.

__

He at least has the decency to look sheepish at that. “Your, uh. Your mom told me.”

__

Mike’s jaw clenches.

__

“Don’t be mad at her,” Tom says guiltily. “I called her to get your address so I could send you the letter, and then… I dunno, we talked a couple more times, and… she worries about you, man.” The way he says it makes it clear she’s not the only one.

__

It would be sweet if it didn’t make Mike feel like putting his fist through a wall.

__

“Seriously, I know you don’t–” Tom starts, but Mike just shakes his head and puts his hands up, turning away.

__

“Just – shut up for a second,” he says harshly, and then walks out the front door. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he’s got his phone out of his pocket halfway down the driveway.

__

“Hey, sweetie,” his mom says when she picks up. “How are you?”

__

“Mom,” he says hoarsely, trying to compose himself. “Did you tell Tom where I am?”

__

She doesn’t say anything, but it’s a pretty clear answer all the same.

__

“Jesus,” he says, rubbing his face with his hand. “Why the hell – sorry, why would you do that?”

__

“Hey, now,” she says, doing that soothing-but-firm mom thing. “Listen, Mikey. I know you need to handle this your own way. I know you’re going through some rough stuff. And I know that you try and do it all on your own, which isn’t good for you. Okay? And that poor kid sounded so torn up just to be calling me to ask for your address so he could write you a letter because you won’t answer his calls. That’s not good for anyone. He deserved to see you, and you deserve a friend.”

__

Mike frowns, and then – “Wait. Did _you_ tell him to come?”

__

“Yes,” she says firmly. “I did.”

__

Mike laughs angrily. “Great. _Great._ Thanks, mom. So you can come get him and drive him back to the airport then, because he’s not staying here.”

__

“Michael.” She’s starting to sound sharp now. “Stop it. You’re acting childish. I love you, and you are my son, and that’s why I’m not going to let you punish yourself like this, isolating yourself all alone up there. No one is an island, not you or me or Tom or anyone, do you understand me?”

__

He doesn’t answer.

__

“If you send him away, fine. I can’t stop you. But I will come up there and drag you home with me,” she finally says. “Your choice.”

__

“Mom,” he says, quieter this time. That isn’t a choice. That’s blackmail.

__

“Michael,” she says back, just as quiet, just as firm.

__

He’s not gonna win this one.

__

-

__

When he gets back to the house, Tom is _still_ right where he fucking left him. Mike’s frustration flares up at that, for whatever reason, like – what the fuck? Who just _does_ that? Just stays, like a dog who’s been told to.

__

“So apparently you’re staying,” he says flatly.

__

“I, uh. Yeah,” Tom agrees nervously. “If… I know I basically just invited myself, I mean.”

__

“Yeah. Mom told me what happened. Whatever. I can’t – you can have the downstairs bedroom.” Mike nods towards the doorway. If he just focuses on the logistics maybe he won’t be able to think too much about what a terrible idea this is. “I’ll fold up Grace’s pack and play.”

__

“Oh,” says Tom, sounding surprised. “You’re not sleeping there?”

__

“No.” Mike frowns. “I’m in the master. Why?”

__

“Oh. I just thought – because of the stairs. I mean, should you be going up and down those?” Tom does something concerned with his eyebrows, and Mike wants to barf again.

__

He breathes in, counts, holds it, counts, breaths out, counts. That’s his only trick to keep himself in check these days.

__

“It’s fine,” he says shortly. “I do fine. Take the guest room.”

__

“Are you sure?” Tom does not sound sure at all, like Mike’s too delicate to even have a _conversation_ about stairs, let alone use them. Like he doesn’t fucking do it every day already, all on his on.

__

“I’m sure. Jesus.”

__

Tom just makes that dubious, worried face, though, and doesn’t make a move towards the guest room. He’s trying to wait Mike out. Mike knows this fucking game, and without realizing it he’s slamming his hand flat on the counter in frustration, making everything rattle and both of them startle.

__

“Listen. You can’t stay here if you’re gonna treat me like a fucking kid,” Mike says, hoping wildly that he sounds firm and not just desperate. “You can’t fuck up my routine and you can’t feel sorry for me. I just – I can’t deal with that.”

__

“Yeah, of course,” Tom says quietly, chagrined. “I wouldn’t…”

__

He _would_ , though, that’s the thing. He probably _will_. Mike should absolutely kick him out, tell him he’s sorry (he isn’t) but he just can’t handle having Tom in his fucking house right now, and take an extra Ativan and pass out.

__

But he hears his mom’s voice in his head, and Tom looks so _familiar_.

__

It’s not like Mike hasn’t been stupid about Tom since day one. No reason to change that now.

__

-

__

Tom is up and moving around before Mike the next morning. It’s kind of jarring when he wakes up, propping himself up against his headboard and bending forward at the waist, trying to stretch out his back and his hamstrings as best he can before they can tense up too badly, and hears something clattering around downstairs.

__

It’s not that he _forgot_ that Tom’s there. That would be fucking impossible. But it’s still bizarre to hear someone else’s sounds in his house where he’s so used to being alone.

__

If he stays upstairs stretching and running through some easy PT exercises longer than usual, it’s not because he’s avoiding Tom. That’s what he tells himself. Several times.

__

It’s a fine line, though, because if he stays holed up for too long it’ll be obvious, and for some reason the idea of letting Tom know just how badly his presence is fucking with Mike feels equally as shitty as going downstairs and facing him. So sooner than he’d like, Mike slowly brushes his teeth, pulls on his sweatpants and a t-shirt, and plods carefully down the stairs with his cane like nothing is weird about this at all. He’s just in his house like always, sticking to his routine.

__

Tom is at the stove cooking breakfast, though, which is definitely _not_ part of the routine.

__

Mike stands there, looking at his broad back. He knows Tom must have heard him step-thudding down the wooden stairs, but he doesn’t turn around, like he’s giving Mike his privacy or something until he’s ready to announce himself.

__

Mike’s not sure what do with that.

__

While he watches him, he thinks about Tom making himself at home, rummaging around through his fridge, and that’s just – it’s too close to the things that Mike tries not think about anymore. Also, stupidly, he’s glad he’d just done a grocery trip. Thinking about Tom seeing his usual bare bones fridge would be too enormously pathetic to handle.

__

“Since when can you cook?” Mike asks eventually.

__

Tom turns around, and god dammit, he looks – he looks good, but even worse than that, he looks so fucking _happy_ to see Mike.

__

“I can scramble eggs, dude,” he says, smiling stupidly. “Good morning.”

__

Mike just squints at him, and takes a seat at the table.

__

They don’t really talk while Tom finishes cooking, probably because he’s very clearly concentrating on not burning the toast, and Mike still isn’t sure what the fuck to do with him being in his kitchen.

__

It surprises him when Tom brings two plates over, setting one down in front of Mike.

__

“It’s, uh. Probably edible,” he says sheepishly, sitting down. Mike doesn’t lift his fork.

__

“I can feed myself,” he says, a little more sharply than he really meant to. Still, it’s – Tom can’t baby him. This will absolutely not work if Tom thinks he’s here to be Mike’s, like, live-in caretaker.

__

That would kill Mike, he’s pretty sure.

__

“I know,” Tom says slowly. He isn’t eating yet either, like he’s waiting Mike out again.

__

“You aren’t my mom,” Mike says. “You don’t have to like… take care of me.”

__

Tom snorts. “No shit.” He rests his fingertips on the table and smiles a little nervously at Mike. “I’m just trying to be a good houseguest, man, okay? Let me pull my weight. _My_ mom would be mad if she thought I was just mooching off you.”

__

Mike looks at him. Tom looks back. It’s going to be a long fucking day if they get stuck in a staring contest, but neither of them seems to want to back down first.

__

Eventually, Mike picks up his fork and takes a bite of his eggs.

__

They’re alright.

__

“So what are you doing today?” Tom asks carefully as they both eat. “I mean, not that it’s really my business. I’m just wondering.”

__

Mike jabs at his eggs.

__

“Physical therapy,” he answers finally. “I go on Thursdays.”

__

“Oh,” Tom says. The way he pauses is conspicuous, and he clearly isn’t sure if he can press his luck by asking anything else.

__

Suddenly the whole thing just makes Mike tired. “I have appointments Mondays and Thursdays,” he explains. “Tuesdays and Wednesdays Grace is here. Sometimes Fridays. Some weekends I go to dinner with my family. That’s basically my schedule. That’s what I do.”

__

It sounds awfully small, saying it like that. Mike refuses to be embarrassed, but it’s not exactly easy to hold it back either.

__

“Sounds nice,” Tom says placidly. A bite of egg falls off his toast.

__

They eat in silence, and while it’s not comfortable by any definition, it also makes Mike want to die slightly less than he was expecting. When it feels like Tom is working his way up to saying something, Mike reaches across the table to grab the notebook he’d left there. Making his list for the day sounds way easier than trying to make conversation.

__

_breakfast dishes_

__

_PT in town_

__

_get gas for truck_

__

_get lunch_

__

_stretch_

__

_act normal_

__

Number six gets fucked up basically immediately, because he can feel Tom watching him with interest, and the attention makes the back of his neck prickle.

__

“I make lists,” Mike says abruptly, shutting the notebook. He feels like an idiot, then, because it’s not like he has to explain himself to Tom. “Like I said, my routine is – it’s important. So lists help. I know what I need to do and I know what to expect.”

__

Tom nods at him. “That makes sense.”

__

“Yeah,” Mike agrees. He still feels suspicious of basically everything coming out of Tom’s mouth, sure that he’s going to find something pitying beneath everything. “I guess.”

__

When they’re both done eating, Mike gets up carefully to take his dishes to the sink, and Tom springs up after him, clearly eager to help. He’s never been good at sitting still too long.

__

Fighting with him about it doesn’t feel worth the effort, so they stand side by side at the sink, rinsing off their plates and putting them in the dishwasher in silence.

__

Mike takes his medication next, purposefully turning away from Tom while he does. Without a task at hand, Tom just kind of – freezes. Mike turns back as he’s swallowing down an anti-inflammatory, and Tom is just standing there, clearly unsure what to do next.

__

He’s growing his beard out a little, Mike notices. It makes him look older. Something about that hits him hard.

__

“Look, do you want to go into town?” Mike asks suddenly. “It’s probably gonna be boring just sitting up here all day, so. You can do whatever while I’m at my appointment.”

__

It must be a testament to Mike’s standoffishness so far that Tom seems genuinely shocked by the generosity of the bare bones invitation. Mike’s already kind of regretting offering anyway, because it just makes it sound like he approves of Tom being here, but there it is.

__

“Yeah, of course,” Tom agrees. “I wouldn't be in the way?”

__

Mike shrugs. “Probably.” Tom’s face goes kind of red at that, and Mike sighs. It’s hard, finding that delicate balance between projecting _I don’t want you to be here right now_ and _I’ve turned into a severe asshole since you last saw me._ Even if maybe the last part is true. Tom doesn’t need to know it, necessarily.

__

“But you’re here, so you might as well come,” Mike adds. “Unless you aren’t staying.”

__

“No, I’m – I’m staying.” Tom’s hands are shoved into his hoodie pocket with enough force to yank it down around his neck a little. “What time do we have to leave?”

__

“Eleven,” Mike says, and turns away. He doesn’t think he can take much more of Tom right now, not with the way he’s standing in his kitchen like he belongs there, trying so hard to seem resolved when it’s pretty clear he’s just nervous.

__

“We’re taking my truck, not your rental,” Mike says as he goes down the hall to the bathroom. He can’t bring himself to turn and face Tom again quite yet.

__

-

__

He drops Tom off at the Starbucks down the road from his PT’s office, and breathes out heavily once the door shuts, Tom waving a little awkwardly as he goes.

__

It’s probably the first time he’s ever felt _relieved_ going into the building. Usually PT exists on a scale of fine to miserable that Mike feels resigned to slogging through as best he can. He’s getting better at telling which days are going to be okay and which ones are going to kick his ass, though, and mentally preparing himself for whatever’s coming, so even if it’s never _fun_ , at least it’s the beast he knows.

__

Thirty minutes of awkward silence in the truck with Tom, on the other hand, is a new kind of unpleasantness.

__

It’s enough to make him feel crazy. How did they used to do this? How did they used to just _be_ together so easily? It’s not that Mike _misses_ it – Mike doesn’t let himself miss stuff like that – and he tries to remind himself that Tom’s the one who chose this, so Tom’s the one who should feel weird and uncomfortable, but… but. It’s hard not to spend the silence thinking about the hundreds of times they’d driven somewhere together, into Kettler or to the airport or wherever, and how easy it was then. How easy everything had been.

__

The best he can offer now is to shrug half-heartedly at Tom when he’d tried to plug his phone into the broken aux cord.

__

When his physical therapist calls him in from the waiting room and asks if he thinks he can handle something a little more strenuous today, Mike nods immediately, ready to be distracted.

__

-

__

Some things he’s still trying to get used to. Having such uninterrupted swaths of free time is the biggest one.

__

Mike can remember, not even a year ago, being so exhausted that he would have given just about anything to have a full day of absolutely nothing to do. The chaos of the season was a beautiful thing, and that made it all the sweeter when they had a rare day with no obligations – no game, no practice, no plane ride. Nothing.

__

Now he has so many days like that they’ve started to choke him. He’s figuring how to fill them, how to make something out of them that feels manageable and sometimes even _good_ , but it’s still a learning process. He figures it probably will be for a long time.

__

And Tom’s presence doesn’t exactly help. If anything, it throws into relief how boring his life is, now that someone else is around to witness it.

__

The day after PT isn’t a Grace day, which means Mike is left with a long weekend of absolutely fucking nothing looming over him. That would be a daunting enough prospect on its own, without the added pressure of knowing he’ll probably have to talk to Tom at some point during it.

__

Mike’s not _not_ talking to Tom, in his defense. They’d exchanged several sentences on the drive home from PT, including Mike asking Tom what kind of pizza he wanted, because he was too mentally exhausted and also fucking sore to even think about cooking dinner. And Mike hadn’t _specifically_ gone to bed early to avoid the weirdness of sitting on the sofa and flipping through TV channels or something with Tom, but it had been a welcome side effect of being so worn out.

__

In the morning, Tom is scrambling eggs again.

__

Apparently this is going to be the new routine.

__

“So you don’t have to do anything today?” Tom asks him after breakfast. His voice sounds hopeful, and Mike doesn’t know what to do with that.

__

“No,” he says. “Hang out here, I guess. No Grace or appointments, and I don’t have dinner with my parents until next week, so.” He spreads his hands kind of pointlessly. _All this nothingness_ , maybe.

__

“That sounds pretty nice to me,” Tom says.

__

It probably _does_ , since it hasn’t been essentially mandatory for Tom for months and months.

__

“Alright,” Mike says. “Well. I’m gonna shower. Might go sit outside after that.” He waits for a minute, trying to decide his next move. “If you wanna come with… I mean. I’m probably just gonna read a book, but.” 

__

“Sure, yeah,” Tom agrees easily. Mike’s pretty sure he could say he wanted to punch Tom in the stomach and he’d say it sounds great.

__

Tom’s always been kind of easy like that, though. Happy to let Mike pick where they were going to eat dinner, or what to watch on TV, or whatever. Mike had always figured it was just because he was pickier about stuff.

__

He showers slowly, keeping the hot water on his knee for a long time. He spends a minute idly touching his dick, but jerking off in the shower is just too precarious when you only have one good leg, and anyway he’s conspicuously aware of Tom just down the hall.

__

Not that it’s – anything worth being aware of. The door’s closed. It’s not like Mike didn’t jerk off plenty when they – 

__

Mike drops his hand and turns off the shower.

__

Tom has his laptop out when Mike comes back to the main room. “I got on the wifi,” he says apologetically. “Is that okay?”

__

Mike blinks. “Of course you can – yeah. It’s fine.” He searches around for his usual things. “It, uh. Should work out on the deck, if you wanna…” He nods his head outside.

__

They post up on the deck together, Mike with his book and his water and his phone in one chair and Tom with his computer and a Gatorade he must have gotten somewhere on the one next to him. The day is another nice one, and Mike might need to put up the patio umbrella once the sun comes further up, or at least put on sunscreen.

__

“Thank you for not kicking me out,” Tom says after a while. “I mean. I’d understand if you had. But I’m glad you didn’t.”

__

Mike’s face burns, and he bends back the cover of his paperback. “Okay.”

__

“And you don’t need to like, entertain me. Or go out of your way or whatever to like…” Tom shrugs. “I don’t wanna be a burden.”

__

“Alright. Well, it’s boring up here, so,” Mike warns him. “Glad you aren’t expecting entertainment.” Off in the distance, he hears a loon.

__

“I dunno,” Tom says. “It’s peaceful.” He gazes out over the lake. “Remember last time we were up here?”

__

Mike grimaces. “Kind of,” he lies. He remembers fine.

__

They came up with some of the team, some of the boys from back home. They’d had coolers of beer and a shit ton of rafts, since it’s a no-wake lake, and spent a week getting day drunk and floating around, fishing and barbecuing and chirping each other about dumb crap like chicks and their fantasy leagues. It had all been very bro summer vacation movie, and it had been awesome.

__

Tom had stayed after everyone else left, too, just him and Mike for a couple of days. Ostensibly it was to clean up so it wasn’t a total fucking pit for Mike’s cousins the next weekend, but it was also just – nice. They were so used to doing everything together, it hadn’t even really occurred to either of them that Tom didn’t _have_ to stay. He just _did_.

__

“Burt threw up over that railing,” Mike says, and Tom laughs.

__

“Twice, man.”

__

Mike can’t help grinning, just a little.

__

“It was so fun,” Tom says, quiet but happy. “I miss stuff like that.”

__

And that’s what makes Mike stiffen up, the grin sliding off his face.

__

“I’m gonna read,” he tells Tom, a little gruffly. He almost feels bad, because Tom immediately stops smiling too, his eyebrows going upturned all sad puppy-like, but it’s – it’s not an option. Mike can’t start going down that road.

__

“Okay, yeah,” Tom says, quieter.

__

Mike doesn’t end up reading a single word.

__

-

__

Mike’s not really sure how they get through the whole weekend, but they must.

__

He guesses there isn’t really another option.

__

-

__

Apparently they need groceries, because Tom breaks his scrambled egg streak on Monday morning, pouring bowls of cereal for both of them instead. He still has that dumb, hopeful expression when he gives it to Mike, though, like nothing matters more to him than Mike enjoying his Frosties.

__

It makes Mike feel like an asshole, somehow. A fucking bowl of cereal.

__

“I have therapy today,” Mike says deliberately once they're finished and their bowls are in the dishwasher. “That’s my appointment on Mondays. So.”

__

It’s just a _statement_ , not a test or anything, because those kinds of secret tests are, apparently, not a good method of communicating his feelings or expectations. Or so he has been informed.

__

Mike still watches Tom’s reaction pretty carefully, though.

__

To his credit, he doesn’t really do much at all, just makes a thoughtful sort of expression and kind of nods.

__

“Oh. Well, that’s really good, man. That you have someone you’re talking to.”

__

Mike scowls a little. He’s not sure what he was looking for, honestly, but he decides he doesn’t particularly appreciate Tom sounding so impressed that Mike’s not a _total_ fuckup.

__

“Yeah, well. I was ‘strongly encouraged.’” He crosses his arms.

__

“I actually, uh, talk to Holts’ guy sometimes,” Tom says after a moment. “His sports therapist?”

__

And, huh. That’s new.

__

“I mean, just a couple of times, so it’s probably not really the same, but Holts said that when he’s like… in his head, you know, it helps to talk it out.”

__

“What do you talk about?” Mike asks warily.

__

Tom shrugs. “Hockey, mostly? Playoffs shit, what my, like… goals are. As a player, or whatever.” He looks palpably uncomfortable. “You, sometimes.”

__

Mike doesn’t know what to say to that. “Oh.”

__

“Sorry,” Tom says sheepishly.

__

“What for?”

__

Tom shrugs. “I dunno. If that’s… weird? To basically say I talk to a therapist about you? I’m not sure.”

__

Mike honestly doesn’t know either. His metric for what’s weird is all fucked up.

__

“But it helps, I guess. I figured I need to… to grow up a little or something,” Tom continues. He says it like he’s forcing himself to, barreling ahead even though it feels unnatural. “I mean, I know I’m not the smartest guy in the world or anything, so it’s probably a good idea to have someone else help me figure some of my shit out. You know?”

__

“I do,” Mike answers slowly. Boy fucking _does_ he. He’s not sure what to do with that knowledge, both of them being in the same boat like that. “When, uh. When did you start talking to him?”

__

At that, Tom looks down and doesn’t answer, just shoves his hands in his pockets instead.

__

Mike gets the picture anyway.

__

-

__

Mike’s therapist is a guy named Jeremy. He’s probably not that much older that Mike is, and it had taken about a month for Mike to stop eyeballing him warily and actually _say_ anything during their sessions. Part of that was probably just his innate hockey player discomfort with talking about feelings in general, but another part was because before his first appointment he’d basically been expecting a therapist to be someone who looked like a kindly but efficient grandma, not a guy with a beard in a flannel shirt like someone he’d run into at a bar.

__

Jeremy is a good dude, though. He has a soft and soothing voice, and isn’t always in pure _and how does that make you feel_ therapist mode. Like, seventy-five percent of the time he is, but he’ll also make jokes with Mike, too, and ones that don’t seem like the kind that are actually a therapy tool to put him at ease.

__

Circumstances being vastly different, Mike probably would have been at least mildly interested.

__

Circumstances _are_ what they are, though, so as friendly as Jeremy is, his role in Mike’s life is relegated strictly to a professional capacity. He’s here to help fix Mike’s messed up head, and that’s all.

__

It’s weird, how all these delineating lines suddenly exist, mapping out the different ways Mike views people, how he can and should interact with them. Before, there were probably only a handful of small ways that Mike categorized people – hockey people and not hockey people being the major two.

__

That dichotomy doesn’t really work so well anymore, turns out.

__

For as used to talking to Jeremy as he is, it still takes Mike twenty minutes into their session to finally mention Tom’s sudden appearance. Jeremy, luckily, just raises an eyebrow, doesn’t call him out on how maybe Mike could have opened with that, and lets Mike keep talking.

__

“You know what I think is weird?” Jeremy asks him once Mike finishes explaining the whole – thing. As best he can, at least. 

__

“Everything?” Mike says, mostly to himself. He’s realized that therapists think basically everything is weird, and quote-unquote, _worth exploring._

__

Jeremy ignores him.

__

“It’s so bizarre to me how the NHL has all these guys, right, who are _so_ invested in their program, and they’re basically required to reduce their whole identity to this one single facet of being a hockey player, you know? Which, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty unsustainable for a person. Like, how many other careers are there where you’re basically guaranteed to be unable to do them anymore by the time you hit your mid thirties?” Jeremy isn’t using his therapist voice, more just thinking out loud, so Mike doesn’t think he’s supposed to answer. “Obviously, yes, it’s the nature of the lifestyle, and it’s not totally unique, but still – it requires you guys to live and breathe this one singular thing, except it’s nothing you can actually hold on to. Doesn’t exactly set you up to smoothly transition out of it when your time is done. Especially if it comes out of nowhere.”

__

Mike shrugs uncomfortably. “I mean. The player’s association is supposed to help out, but…” He gestures vaguely with his hands. “Usually that means you get a call at six months and a year saying, ‘Hey, you good? Okay, cool, best of luck.’”

__

Jeremy snorts. “Therapist’s bias, obviously, but that just seems so inadequate to me.” He shakes his head. “But then again, you know my line.”

__

“Everyone needs therapy,” Mike repeats dutifully, a wry smile twisting his mouth.

__

“They really do,” Jeremy agrees with a laugh. “You know any other retired hockey players willing to try talking about their feelings, you send ‘em my way. Lord knows you guys need it, eh?”

__

Mike snorts, and then chews his lip a little, thinking.

__

“He – Tom, I mean – he said he’s talked to a sports therapist, actually? Just a few times, but, you know. I have no idea what that actually entails, though. If it’s the same sort of stuff we do, or – or just about game stuff, maybe? I dunno.”

__

Jeremy shrugs, and to Mike’s private disappointment, doesn’t seem interested in speculating. “Anyway,” he says, waving a hand.

__

And then they’re back in therapy mode, all about what Mike’s immediate reaction to seeing Tom was like, and what does he think was _beneath_ that, and what kinds of boundaries should he set for the visit, and which ones he _wants_ to set but might not actually necessary, just a defense mechanism. Normal therapy stuff that makes Mike feel more than a little wrung out by the time their session is up.

__

As he’s retrieving his cane and carefully standing up to leave, he thinks of something, and turns back to Jeremy where he’s wiping up a ring on his table from his coffee mug.

__

“What made you say that stuff earlier?” he asks. “About the, uh, professional support and stuff. From the league. Because, like, you’re right, but I’m here now, so...”

__

Jeremy tilts his head at Mike a little, like it ought to be obvious. “Well, you know. It sounds like you're not the only one who could have used better support after your accident. I imagine your friend must have really been at loose ends if he resorted to just showing up here unannounced, eh?”

__

Mike – hadn’t really thought about it like that, actually.

__

“See you next week,” Jeremy says as Mike leaves, and he’s so caught up in that idea – that _Tom_ really might be messed up too – that has to remind himself to wave. By the time he puts his hand up jerkily, the door is already swinging shut.

__

-

__

When he gets home, Tom is outside, pushing the lawnmower up and down the small patch of grass between the house and the trees. His head is bobbing along to whatever he’s listening to on his headphones, and he must not hear Mike’s truck when he pulls up, or just doesn’t care, because he keeps on mowing even after Mike parks.

__

He stays in the cab of the truck for a while, just – looking. Not in a creepy way; it’s just that it feels safer to do it here, from a distance, where Tom isn’t aware of him.

__

_That was your best friend_ , he thinks. It feels heavy. Maybe because of the conspicuous past tense, that weighty _was_. Maybe because it’s such an incomplete framing of what Tom was for Mike.

__

As Mike sits there, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Tom slows the lawnmower to a stop. Absently, he tugs the hem of his gray t-shirt up to wipe the sweat away from his face, leaving a strip of stomach bare. He looks so fucking _good_.

__

Mike swallows heavily, staring. 

__

He’s not exactly _surprised_ that he’s still reacting like – this. It just would have been nice to discover he was over it, is all.

__

Tom turns around then, waving happily when he sees Mike. He lifts his hand in return, and then carefully hauls himself out of the truck.

__

“You’re back,” Tom says, smiling. Like Mike coming back to his own house is an awesome surprise or something.

__

“You didn’t have to do that,” Mike says, nodding to the lawnmower. Tom just shrugs, though, and dusts his hands off on his shorts.

__

“I wanted to,” he says. “I was kinda bored anyway.”

__

Mike wants to say something like, _well, that’s your own fault for coming out to the middle of nowhere_. He wants to be annoyed by Tom, his presence and his easiness and fucking… everything about him.

__

But he doesn’t really have it in him right now, it turns out. “Well. Thanks,” he says instead.

__

“No big,” Tom says, and then starts rolling the lawnmower over to the shed. Mike watches him go, and thinks about that. How for Tom it really _isn’t_. For him, mowing the lawn is just another thing where he thinks, _hey, I should do that_ , and then does it. He doesn’t have to evaluate every step, the amount of effort it will take and whether he’s up to it or not and if he shouldn’t just ignore it or have someone else take care of it eventually.

__

It used to be like that for Mike too.

__

But maybe it’s not that simple, either. Tom can mow the lawn without it turning into a fucking _thing_ , sure, but maybe Jeremy’s right. Maybe there’s other shit that isn’t easy for him. Probably coming here, for one.

__

Maybe that’s why Mike can’t feel annoyed right now.

__

He waits for Tom to shut the shed and make his way back over. He looks a little tentative, now, like he isn’t sure how Mike’s going to react. He has a couple blades of grass stuck to the sweat on his forehead.

__

“You want a sandwich?” Mike asks, leading them up the walk to the front door.

__

“Yeah,” Tom says, smiling disproportionately huge, as if Mike had offered him something really fucking amazing and not just lunch. “That’d be awesome.”

__

Mike’s pretty sure he’ll remember how to be annoyed sooner or later. He’s still not _comfortable_ having Tom here, but for the moment it’s not so bad to just take it as it is, make them their sandwiches to eat outside and let the rest of it sort itself out later.

__

-

__

Waiting for Carol to drop Grace off on Tuesday morning, Mike has to remind himself to be nice. He loves Carol a lot, even if she _had_ clearly been in on whatever Operation Dumbo Drop plan had resulted in Tom showing up unannounced. She probably thought she was doing something nice for Mike. Even if that something nice is currently driving Mike crazy with his pacing around the kitchen.

__

Mike wonders if Tom’s nervous about co-babysitting all day.

__

Well. If he is, that’s his own problem.

__

At least it’s hard to be too pissy once Grace arrives and Carol hands her off to Mike.

__

“She was super cranky this morning,” Carol warns on her way out the door. “So you’ll be in good company.”

__

Mike wrinkles his nose at her. She just smiles, and then she’s gone, blowing kisses at Gracie as she goes.

__

“So. This is Grace,” Mike says to Tom after a moment of the three of them just standing stupidly in the foyer. “You kind of met her the other day, though.”

__

“Hi, Grace,” Tom says to her, hunching down a little to look at her and waving his big fingers at her.

__

Grace just gives him a suspicious look, and then bursts into tears.

__

“Oh, oh jeez,” Tom says, stepping back. “Hey, sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He looks horrified.

__

“It’s okay. She’s just a little nervous with new people sometimes,” Mike says, bouncing her a little and letting her tuck her face into his shoulder, away from Tom. Secretly, he’s vindicated, and thinks, _good job, Gracie_. It’s nice that Tom isn’t immediately better than him at this. 

__

“C’mon,” he says to Tom, letting him follow them down the hallway.

__

Gracie stops crying after not very long, which Mike reluctantly admits is _probably_ a good thing. Not really worth sticking it to Tom if it means traumatizing his goddaughter in the process.

__

Tom is hesitant with her at first, although he clearly wants to win her over. He keeps offering her new toys whenever she flings one across the room, like tiny little bribes. Eventually, Mike asks if he wants to try holding her, because Tom’s looking at her like he really does, but isn’t sure if he’s allowed.

__

“Is it alright?” Tom asks hesitantly, even though he’s already holding his big arms out.

__

“You aren’t gonna be very useful around here if you can’t hold her,” Mike says, rolling his eyes. “Here, like…” He puts Grace in Tom’s arm, repositioning them a little until Grace is propped up and facing outwards the way she likes. “She doesn’t like to face your chest unless she’s sleepy,” he says, focusing on Grace, running his knuckle absently on her cheek. It’s easier to look at her than at Tom, especially this close up. “Kid has some serious fomo, I think. Needs to see everything that’s going on.”

__

“Oh yeah?” Tom asks. Mike glances up at him, and predictably his stomach does something weird. He steps back a little too abruptly and has to turn his wince into his shoulder. “I get that,” Tom continues, this time talking to Grace. “Hi, baby. Hey.”

__

Grace looks up at him, wavers for a moment, and then starts to cry again.

__

“Oh my God,” Tom says, looking bereft all over again. “She really hates me, huh?”

__

He starts to hand her back to Mike, but he shakes his head. “No, hey, don’t give up yet.” He’s _pretty_ sure she’s faking her outrage this time, or at least, like seventy-five percent faking it, and Mike wasn’t kidding when he said Tom ought to be able to hold her. Mike’s not going to be the one stuck babysitting an infant _and_ a grown-ass man all by himself.

__

“Try, like, walking around with her. Or bouncing. She likes that.”

__

Tom pulls a doubtful face, but shifts Grace carefully in his arms and slowly starts to bounce her up and down, taking careful steps around the living room and kitchen.

__

“Here we go,” he says to her softly. “Here we go, Gracie. This isn’t so bad, huh?”

__

The two of them drift by the windows, around the island in the kitchen and loop around the table before heading back to wave hi to Mike on the sofa.

__

“See?” Mike says to her. She’s still crying, but the flailing has stopped, which means she’s probably winding down. “He’s not so bad.”

__

He doesn’t mean to say it, really, but Tom grins at it.

__

“Yeah,” Tom says, still smiling. “Not so bad.”

__

Grace does calm down, her crying tapering off after a couple more laps of the ground floor. Mike tries not to stare, but the sight of Tom holding Gracie, swaying her gently and talking to her softly and his stupid big arms and his stupid backwards hat, it’s just all – a lot.

__

Anyway, Mike’s just… making sure Tom’s okay.

__

It’s an old habit that won’t die, apparently.

__

-

__

Grace has two more catastrophic meltdowns that morning, and eventually crashes for a nap on Mike’s chest. He thinks about moving her to the pack and play, but eventually decides not to risk her waking up and shrieking again.

__

“Hand me the remote,” he tells Tom quietly, who’s perched very carefully beside them on the couch, clearly focused on not moving and accidentally waking the baby. Mike can tell by the skeptical face Tom makes at the request. “It’s fine,” he says, twisting his mouth around. “I’ll keep it low.”

__

She stays asleep on top of Mike for another hour, and Tom relaxes eventually too. It’s – weird, but comfortable, the three of them on the sofa with a cooking show on TV. In the moment, as Mike just lets himself settle into it, it feels like there’s nothing wrong with the picture at all; that everything is exactly as it should be, right up until Mike looks at it too directly. Then the strangeness of it all comes into focus again.

__

It’s almost a relief when Grace wakes up again, suddenly full of energy and completely unwilling to eat her lunch. It takes him and Tom both to get her to finish even half her food, and stay entertained enough to avoid another shrieking fit.

__

Tom’s covered in spit-up and mashed sweet potatoes by the time Carol shows up to pick up Grace, and Mike feels about as worn out as Tom looks.

__

“Oh my God,” Tom groans, flopping down on the sofa like he just ran a marathon. “Don’t get me wrong, Grace is awesome, but that was exhausting. How do you do that every day?”

__

“Tomorrow will be easier,” Mike tells him. It’s stupid, this impulse to comfort Tom when he’s the one who chose to be here, the one who decided to hell with comfort zones and shit, but – but that’s always been what Mike’s done. He riles Tom up, yeah, but also looks out for him.

__

Mike’s pretty sure that most people don’t really get how touchy and sensitive Tom can be; they just see a huge tank who constantly gets in fights, and don’t get _why_ Tom’s always in the middle of a scrum. Mike knows, though. Mike knows about his juniors coach who told Tom he was never gonna be the skills player he wanted to be and to lean into the physical play instead. And Mike knows how personally Tom takes any dirty hit on his team, how proud he feels when he can defend them. “That’s what I’m good at,” he’d told Mike once, shrugging his shoulders. Mike had heard what he’d really meant – that’s _all_ I’m good at – and wanted to argue, but just pursed his lips instead.

__

Mike shakes his head, because thinking too much like this makes him feel raw. And he’s exhausted from Grace’s tantrums, and they need to figure out what they’re going to have for dinner, and he just – needs to keep himself moving, instead of reminiscing. Needs to do what needs doing and not let his mind think too much about it, the warring weirdness and rightness of the day, of having Tom with him to help with the baby. Of having Tom nearby at all.

__

-

__

Mike was right; the next day is easier. Maybe Grace is just less cranky, or maybe she’s less surprised to see Tom this time, but she doesn’t throw any major tantrums, and only cries for a minute after Carol leaves and Mike passes her to Tom so he can heat up her bottle. 

__

Mike kind of wants to ask her what the secret is, getting used to Tom so quickly. Because it’s still fucking _him_ up, coming downstairs in the morning to see Tom’s wide shoulders in front of the toaster or buttering a bagel for him. But apparently he’s less well-adjusted than an infant, because by the fourth Grace-watching day, she loves Tom, and he’s completely wrapped around her chubby finger.

__

As if Mike doesn’t have enough shit going on, now he has to deal with knowing the particular voice Tom uses to when he’s pretending to make Grace’s stuffed animals talk too.

__

It’s barely been any time, and they’re already falling into a routine. Tom comes to town with Mike on PT days, and stays home when he goes to see Jeremy. Tom makes breakfast, Mike makes a list, they watch Gracie and take turns figuring out dinner.

__

It’s too easy, just like it was the first time. Mike can’t help but wonder how long it’s going to take before it fucks him up all over again.

__

-

__

“You aren’t allowed to cancel on dinner tomorrow,” Mike’s mom tells him during their phone call on Friday.

__

“I know. I never cancel,” he says, frowning. He’s out on the deck, holding a cold can of Coke idly against his knee. Tom’s been napping on the couch for a while, which is – well, it had seemed like a good opportunity to call his mom. Taking it outside is just good manners.

__

“Well. In case you were thinking about it, don’t. We expect you and Tom to both be there.”

__

Mike leans backwards, pointing his frown through the window at where Tom is sleeping. He’s starting to shift around, tossing an arm over his closed eyes while Mike watches. That means he’s going to wake up soon. He always gets restless at the end of his naps.

__

“Sure you don’t just want Tom?” he asks. “Since you guys are such good buddies.”

__

“Michael,” she says, sighing. “I want to see _both_ of you, and you know it.”

__

“I know, sorry,” he says. “It’s just… weird, mom. It’s weird to have him here, with me all…”

__

“I bet it is. I’m proud of you for trying anyway,” she tells him. “You’re not a quitter, you know? You never have been.”

__

He’s not sure he does know.

__

They talk for a couple more minutes, nothing especially noteworthy. He rolls the Coke can back and forth until it starts to get warm under his palms, and carries it back inside unopened when he hangs up.

__

Tom is sitting up and yawning as Mike closes the slider behind him. “Hey,” he says, nodding.

__

“Hey,” Tom says, blinking and smiling blearily up at him. It’s slightly devastating. “Oh, jeez, how long was I out?”

__

“About two hours, I guess?” Mike’s not sure he wants to admit how closely he’d been paying attention. “I’m not really sure.”

__

“Must have needed it,” Tom says, shrugging. He tilts his chin to stretch his neck, and stands up. “You hungry?”

__

He doesn’t wait for Mike to answer, just heads to the kitchen and starts making them some sandwiches. Mike follows after a moment, mostly because he isn’t sure what else to do.

__

“We have to go to dinner with my family on Saturday,” he tells Tom. “It’s non-negotiable, apparently. Your co-conspirator is excited to see you.”

__

Tom grimaces a little, but doesn’t really react otherwise. He must be getting used to Mike giving him shit again.

__

“Do I need to like… dress nice? Cuz I didn’t really bring anything fancy,” Tom asks as he brings them their food.

__

Mike snorts. “No, c’mon. It’s just mom and dad and Jimmy and Carol. Unless you’re really trying to impress them or something.”

__

“I’m trying to have _manners_ ,” Tom says, and he smiles crookedly. “Some of us have those.”

__

Mike’s about to say something about how it’s not very _good manners_ to show up to someone’s house uninvited, but he bites it back at the last second. He realizes he doesn’t mean it to hurt, just as a jab – which is kind of surprisingly, honestly – and he’s also pretty sure it _would_ hurt, would make Tom’s face crumple that way it does when he feels guilty about something.

__

Maybe he’s just tired of arguing, but Mike doesn’t want to do that right now. He eats his sandwich instead, and tries for the hundredth time not to think about how weird this all is.

__

-

__

Dinner itself isn’t awful. Tom is the same level of awkwardly polite that he always is with Mike’s parents, even after all the times over the years his mom has told him he’s _basically family_. She doesn’t tonight, at least, which – Mike’s glad about that.

__

They don’t talk about hockey with him, clearly in deference to Mike. During dinner Mike’s mom mostly asks Tom about his family, and Mike distracts himself playing with Grace, not sure he wants to hear the answers.

__

It’s not until dessert that Mike’s dad finally mentions the lockout in a roundabout way, saying that it’s nice that Tom can visit “so late in the year.”

__

Tom blushes a little, which shouldn’t be endearing. It really, really shouldn’t be. Mike scowls, and lifts Grace up, feeling only a little ashamed of using his baby goddaughter as a human shield.

__

“Yeah, uh, it is nice to get to see Mike,” Tom agrees awkwardly.

__

“You have any idea how long you’ll be able to stick around?” Mike’s dad asks neutrally, carefully avoiding the subtext of the question like its a booby trap.

__

“Not really,” Tom shrugs. “I mean. I’m not really in that – loop.” He glances over at Mike, then, clearly unsure if that was too direct.

__

Mike just hoists Gracie higher, leaning in to kiss her nose.

__

“Well, we’re just glad you’re here,” Mike’s mom says diplomatically, and then diverts the conversation away.

__

They make it through dessert and coffee, and Tom holds Grace for a little while as Mike and his mom rinse off some dishes in the kitchen in companionable silence.

__

“Not so bad, right?” his mom asks once they’re done, cupping his cheek in her hand. Mike doesn’t know if she means dinner specifically, or having Tom around in general, but either way, the answer is probably the same.

__

“I guess not,” he says, and then hesitates for a second before leaning in to give her a hug. She seems surprised, but hugs him back immediately and fiercely, and for a moment he lets himself rest his head on her shoulder, pretending that his mom can still fix everything for him.

__

In the truck, once they’ve said their goodbyes, Tom lets out a heavy breath like he’s been holding it in for hours. Mike glances at him sideways, and Tom laughs sheepishly.

__

“Sorry. I was nervous, I guess,” he admits.

__

Mike squints at the road ahead. How does Tom just – _say_ stuff like that? How he’s feeling? He’s always been like that, it’s true, but now it seems especially unimaginable to Mike.

__

“Dude, you’ve been to dinner with them a million times,” Mike says carefully, eyes still on the road, the yellow haze of his headlights.

__

“Not in a while,” Tom says. His knees are bent up a little awkwardly in the cramped truck cab, and Mike has the sudden stupid impulse to reach over and rest his hand on one of them. He clenches his fingers around the steering wheel harder instead, and doesn’t say anything until they’re home.

__

-

__

The next afternoon Tom is fidgety, doing a piss-poor job of disguising the fact that he’s working up to saying something. He’s never been very good at subtlety.

__

After the third time Tom opens his mouth and then closes it nervously while they’re loading the dinner dishes into the dishwasher, Mike can’t take it anymore.

__

“Whatever it is, man, just say it. You’re making me antsy.”

__

Tom blushes. “It’s just – can I ask you something?” he asks hesitantly.

__

“Um. I guess.” The way he’s asking for permission makes Mike tense up.

__

“When we were at your parents’ last night, it just made me wonder, since he like, wasn’t there either, uh. Just. Who’s taking care of Walter?” Tom says carefully.

__

It’s not an outlandish question. It still makes Mike’s stomach churn, though, that nasty shame he knows so well by now blooming inside him until he can feel the tips of his ears turning red.

__

“Jimmy,” he says flatly. “I couldn’t – I didn’t want him up here. Can’t exactly keep up with him, can I?”

__

It’s the truth; it’s the truth and he accepts it and he shouldn’t be embarrassed by bald facts. That’s what Jeremy tells him; that’s what he tells himself.

__

“Oh,” says Tom, and immediately his face starts turning red. Mike hopes they’ll just – just fucking drop it, but apparently Tom scrounges together some resolve because he visibly braces himself to respond. “I’m really sorry, man,” he says, so gently it makes Mike’s fists clench. “I guess I thought – I thought maybe that would be something good to come out of this, you know, being able to have him live with you again. I’m really sorry.”

__

Mike shuts his eyes, then opens them.

__

“Don’t fucking do that,” he says fiercely. “Don’t feel sorry for me, man. You don’t get to do that.”

__

“Okay,” Tom says quickly, still red. “Really, I’m – my bad.”

__

But Mike’s too wound up, now, can feel his own momentum building to something sharp and unhappy. “Seriously. I get that from everyone else, all this fucking pity they feel for poor pathetic fucked up Mike, even if they act like they don’t, and it makes me…” He doesn’t even know what it makes him. Want to scream. Want to disappear. Feels like he already _is_ disappearing, just a ghost borrowing his shitty body.

__

“I didn’t mean to,” Tom starts, and Mike just shakes his head.

__

“Fine, alright. You still can’t, though, even if it’s not on purpose. I already know exactly what I don’t have anymore. I can’t – I can’t not think about it. So you don’t get to… to…”

__

He exhales, and leans against the countertop, his palms sweaty and his forearms shaking a little as he leans all his weight on them.

__

Next to him, Tom’s hand twitches, like he wants to reach out and touch Mike, but stops himself.

__

He never used to hesitate like that. Neither of them did; they were always in each other’s space. Slapping, and tickling, and pinching, but also just shifting each other out of the way while they moved around the kitchen together, or poking each other’s legs with their toes while they watched TV together on the sofa. There was never any reason to hesitate; that was just how they _were_.

__

Tom hesitates now, though, and doesn’t touch him in the end.

__

“It’s not like I don’t have _any_ idea what you’re going through,” Tom says finally, breaking the long silence that’s hovering between them. His shoulders are hunched again, his gaze flitting back and forth between Mike and the floor. “Like. I don’t have hockey right now either, you know? With the lockout. So I sort of know what it’s like.”

__

Mike’s stomach drops. It takes a second for him to process it, because it’s so _fucking_ absurd, and even Tom couldn’t be _that_ thoughtless. At least, Mike didn’t think he could be.

__

He has to steady himself before he can say anything, because his whole body is starting to prickle.

__

“Are you kidding me?” he finally says, very softly.

__

“I mean, I know it’s not the _same_ ,” Tom says, making those earnest eyes at Mike. Like he sincerely thinks this is an okay thing to say. Like his bullshit version of commiserating is actually going to make Mike feel better instead of just sick. “But it’s… I mean, I thought I’d be playing right now too, and I’m not, so. It’s not like you’re the… the only…”

__

He trails off. Mike waits to see if he has anything else to say for himself, but apparently he doesn’t, so Mike carefully leverages himself back from the counter, standing up straight. His whole body is shaking.

__

“Fuck you, Tom,” he says carefully.

__

Tom’s face drops like Mike has slapped him, and he makes a noise like he’s going to say something or apologize, but Mike’s already walking away, heading for the front door. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but it needs to be away, because he can’t deal with this right now. He just can’t. If that makes him an asshole, fine. He’s an asshole.

__

Right now he can’t afford not to be.

__

-

__

He walks slowly along the shore of the lake for as long as his leg will let him. It’s not long enough to burn off the horrible tangle of anger and despair that’s churning his stomach, but he turns back anyway, not willing to end up further from the house than he can manage to get back from on his own.

__

Tom isn’t in the kitchen when he gets back. The door to the downstairs bedroom is shut, and Mike figures that’s where he is.

__

He could knock. He could acknowledge that he’s back, which would be the polite thing to do. If he had to guess, Tom probably worried about him storming out alone like that, and had only held back from texting Mike to see if he was okay because of how angry he’d been.

__

Mike goes upstairs instead, and shuts his door.

__

-

__

There’s a note on the kitchen counter in the morning, a sheet torn out of one of the notebooks Mike keeps scattered around, Tom’s scrawl plain even at a distance.

__

Mike doesn’t let himself read it until he’s made a cup of coffee.

__

_I’m an asshole_ , it says. That same handwriting. Tom scribbled it unevenly, ignoring the lines. _I should never have said that. I’ll stay out of your hair today if you want. Sorry I’m so shitty at this._

__

_\- Tom_

__

True to his word, Tom makes himself scarce for the rest of the day. Mike doesn’t know where he’s gone, but his rental car went with him, so it could be anywhere. If it wasn’t for the “today” in his note – and his bag still in the guest room, when Mike can’t help himself from checking – he’d wonder if Tom had maybe just left for good.

__

The thought makes him feel – something. Something unpleasant, that reminds him exactly what a bad idea this all has probably been from the start. For as angry as he was, he’s already too used to Tom, and will get too messed up if – when? – he leaves.

__

Then again, Tom isn’t usually the one who disappears without warning. For whatever that’s worth.

__

-

__

When Tom finally shows up again in the late afternoon, jangling his car keys like he’s nervous, Mike has had enough time to get his thoughts at least sort of in order. He’s not _waiting_ for Tom in the living room, per se, but – yeah, he kind of is.

__

“Hi,” Tom says carefully, toeing off his shoes.

__

“Hey,” Mike says, nodding at the empty spot beside him on the sofa. “Can we talk?”

__

He’s pretty proud of himself for saying it, honestly, because he doesn’t actually want to talk. He wants to disappear upstairs and shove his head under a pillow and ignore everything that’s hard and shitty. It feels catastrophically unfair that there’s no one to stop him from doing that except for himself, and the knowledge that it won’t actually make anything easier.

__

Tom nods, and he looks almost nervous. He sits down anyway, though.

__

“I shouldn’t have said–” he starts, but Mike stops him. He needs to explain, and his words will get all fucked up if Tom keeps talking and making those sad eyes.

__

“Can I… sorry, I just. I think I need to talk first, if that’s okay? Because I think maybe you – I –” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.

__

“Of course,” Tom fills in after a moment, and God, he’s being so _gentle_ with Mike. It stings something fierce, and yet still manages to hit Mike like a wave, something safe and comfortable that he recognizes from what feels like a lifetime ago.

__

Because Tom _was_ safe and comfortable. Right from the start, an inexplicable fit, right up until he wasn’t anymore.

__

“You gotta understand, man,” Mike says carefully, his voice soft. He can’t find his anger anymore, just a bone-deep weariness that feels a lot like grief, and the shame of knowing he has to show it to Tom if this whole thing is going to work. “It’s not just that I don’t have hockey anymore. It’s like I don’t have _anything_.”

__

Tom frowns. “That’s not true. You’ve still got lots of stuff, Mikey.” 

__

Mike makes a frustrated noise. “I mean, not really, though. That’s my point. Because my whole vision for my life was – that was it. It was all tied up in hockey. I had exactly what I wanted, man, I made the show and I was living in a city where I felt good being there. I had friends, and I had… I had _you_.” 

__

Tom’s face crumples.

__

“I had a future,” Mike continues. “Even if I wasn’t exactly sure where I’d be in a couple years, I knew what I’d be doing. And now I… don’t. Or I guess I do, because I don’t _do_ anything. It’s like every possibility went down the shitter for me the moment I got hit. So I didn’t just lose my job. I lost basically everything.”

__

His stomach feels heavy. He thought you were supposed to feel lighter when you get something big off your chest. 

__

Tom’s hand is on his, then, and he’s very close to Mike. The kind of closeness that used to come so naturally to them, the kind that would somehow always settle Mike and fuck him up at the same time. The kind he always wanted to lean into without feeling like he _had_ to, because he took for granted it would just – always be like that. That everything was just stretching out in front of them, waiting for them to get there.

__

Another possibility that turned into a loss.

__

“I just figured there was always gonna be more time,” Mike says, smiling sadly. “Stupid, right?”

__

“No,” Tom says. His voice is hoarse and emphatic. “No, it’s not.” His fingers tighten around Mike’s, and suddenly that’s all Mike can think about – Tom’s hand, big and a little sweaty, gripping his. 

__

Very slowly, his free hand comes up to the side of Mike’s face. It hovers there for a second, probably giving Mike the chance to pull away, but he doesn’t. He lets Tom touch him, softer than Mike can ever remember, and tentative. It’s just Tom’s hand, big and warm against his cheek, but it cracks something open in Mike, something raw and strained.

__

“There’s time,” Tom says earnestly. “There’s still time for… for whatever. Whatever you want.”

__

It’s a lie, obviously. But it’s a nice lie, and Mike lets himself sit there and believe for longer than he should, until Tom’s hand grows too warm on his face, something he’ll get too used to if he doesn’t make himself pull away.

__

He smiles gently as he does, shaking his head.

__

-

__

It’s raining and gray on Tuesday, so Mike, Tom, and Grace are stuck inside. Pretty much all three of them have developed cabin fever by lunchtime, and Mike has totally depleted his repertoire of “keep Gracie amused” tricks. They’ve listened to the Wiggles on Mike’s iPad, stacked her blocks, done the five piece wooden zoo animals puzzle at least ten times, and thrown her stuffed llama around the living room enough times to make Mike’s rotator cuff a little sore.

__

She refuses to nap all afternoon, even though the shitty weather just makes Mike want to sleep, and fusses steadily the whole time, her little face so visibly tired and displeased that Mike would almost laugh if he wasn’t sure him and Tom were both wearing the same expression too.

__

Grace finally conks out after dinnertime, splayed out on her play mat. Carol won’t be there until late to pick her up – some meeting to go to – so Tom and Mike take the opportunity to flop down on the ground beside her, both of them sighing heavily before lapsing into silence that’s, for the most part, comfortable.

__

It’s disarmingly pleasant, the three of them like this: Grace quiet and sleeping, Tom sitting next to her and Mike leaning up against the sofa. It’s dark outside, the rain pattering down steadily, and it gives the whole cabin a sense of close, quiet coziness that Mike feels himself settling into entirely too easily.

__

That’s dangerous territory.

__

He hopes it’s just him that’s feeling it, exaggerating the atmosphere in his head, but Tom keeps glancing up at him and then away when Mike looks over, distracting himself rearranging the edge of Grace’s blanket or something. So maybe not.

__

Mike tries to think of something he can say to break the mood, and fails.

__

“Do you ever think about…” Tom says finally before trailing off.

__

He’s looking conspicuously down at Grace, eyes soft, and Mike’s whole chest clenches; he can guess what Tom means.

__

He’s going to make Tom say it if he wants an answer, though.

__

“About what?”

__

Tom shrugs a little. “This.” He reaches down to Grace’s hand, clenched into a little ball as she sleeps, and carefully touches it until she opens it, grabbing onto his finger without waking up.

__

He could just mean babies in general. Whether Mike ever thought about having his own, about a family and what his might look like someday. Even though Tom must know the answer to that; it can’t have been much of a secret that Mike’s soft for kids, babies especially.

__

Knowing Tom, and his preternatural ability to decimate whatever defensive walls Mike manages to cobble together, he probably means more than that.

__

“Yes,” Mike admits. Either way, it’s honest. He’s thought about a lot of things.

__

“Did you know T.J. thought we were together?” Tom asks quietly after a minute. He’s still pointedly not looking at Mike as he says it, just running his thumb carefully over the top of Grace’s hand. Everything about it makes Mike’s chest clench in a horrible way.

__

“C’mon,” he says, and it comes out hoarse.

__

Tom just smiles, though, kind of sadly, and turns towards Mike, disentangling from Grace to do so. “He said something to me after – everything. He was really surprised when I told him it wasn’t – that we never…”

__

Never what? Mike wonders. Never did that? Or never got around to it?

__

“Weird,” he says gruffly. He doesn’t know what else to say.

__

“Weird that he thought that?” Tom asks. He’s still so careful. Mike can’t deal with it.

__

“No,” he admits, closing his eyes for a long moment. Because he can’t lie about it. It would be easier if he could, but when has he ever made things easier on himself?

__

Tom disengages from Grace’s clutch carefully and leans in close, and Mike realizes very suddenly that Tom’s going to kiss him.

__

“I can’t,” he says quietly, putting his hand on Tom’s chest to stop him. “I’m sorry, Tommy, but…”

__

“But,” Tom repeats, a little sadly but not entirely surprised.

__

But this isn’t how it was supposed to happen for the first time, Mike thinks. He doesn’t know how it _was_ supposed to happen, but he knows it wasn’t like this. Not here or now, not while he’s so… this.

__

He doesn’t know how to make Tom understand that all, though. It sounds like a cop-out, and maybe it is, a little. But this Mike, this person he is now can’t be the one who kisses Tom for the first time.

__

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and means it.

__

“You want to,” Tom says, still so close to him. He doesn’t sound like he’s trying to argue, though. Mostly he just sounds resigned. “Or, like. You used to.”

__

Mike can’t disagree. He did. He does. It doesn’t matter.

__

He nods. He keeps his hand on Tom’s chest, holding him back, anyway.

__

“Alright,” Tom says, nodding, and then he finally pulls away. The distance between them is a relief, and awful. “I get it. I won’t – I’ll let it go.”

__

He looks up, and he’s sad, but he also isn’t leaving. He just resettles, a little more space between them on the floor, his profile reflected in the dark window past him. Mike can’t make himself stop staring at it, at the fuzzy distorted second Tom and everything past it – the trees, the lake, the yard – that he can’t see. Grace, still sleeping next to them.

__

“You can pick,” Tom says eventually, and hands Mike the remote.

__

-

__

In the morning, Mike wonders if it’ll finally be stilted and weird between them now. It’s out there, explicitly, for the first time in their entire friendship, and maybe they can’t withstand that. Maybe they only work when it’s unspoken.

__

Except Tom’s there at the stove, making scrambled eggs again. Outside the window it’s still cloudy and gray, and Tom’s wearing an old sweatshirt when he turns around and smiles at Mike.

__

-

__

“Can I borrow your truck?” Tom asks him the next day over lunch.

__

Mike frowns around his mouthful of leftover chicken. “Why?” Tom’s rental car is still in the driveway, perfectly good.

__

“Gotta pick something up,” Tom says vaguely. He waggles his eyebrows in a stupid way that, unfortunately, is also pretty endearing. “Need the big guns.”

__

“Pick _what_ up?” Mike presses.

__

Tom just shrugs and grins. “It’s a surprise.”

__

Mike doesn’t exactly love surprises these days, but he also can’t think of a reason to say no. He’s already been to PT, and Tom knows he doesn’t have any other plans for the day. So he ends up nodding and handing his keys over to Tom once they’re done eating, torn between suspicion and curiosity.

__

When he hears the truck crunching up the driveway a few hours later, he can’t help himself, and wanders towards the front porch.

__

Tom is hopping down out the cab, grinning up at Mike. Strapped to the top of the truck is a brand new metal frame canoe.

__

“Well?” Tom asks, nodding his head up at it. “What do you think?”

__

Ostensibly, it’s a normal enough activity. They’ve paddled around on canoes and kayaks and shit before, up here and in D.C. and whatever. But looking at the canoe strapped to the truck, all Mike can see is: _the perfect activity for your broken friend._

__

Because you don’t have to walk to use a canoe, do you?

__

“Why did you get this?” he asks hoarsely.

__

“Uh. So we can use it?” He smiles at Mike hopefully.

__

“It’s…” Mike presses his lips together.

__

“I thought, you know. We could take some beers out, maybe fish a little? Just… see some stuff, yeah? It could be nice.”

__

He looks so pleased, and also a little nervous, like he expects Mike to shoot him down even as he hopes he won’t. Maybe Mike’s just contrary by nature, because he swallows down what he wants to say and tries to smile. “Okay, yeah. That does sound nice.”

__

The relief that comes over Tom’s face – Mike’s not sure what to do with it, exactly.

__

-

__

Annoyingly, Tom is right – taking out the canoe _is_ nice. The part where Mike has to stand awkwardly and watch while Tom drags it into the water alone is fucking shitty, yeah, but once he’s settled in the back with his paddle and their bag full of sandwiches and beer and Gatorade, paddling east along the shore, it’s – fucking nice. He can hear loons and bullfrogs and the wind in the reeds; they pass two old guys out fishing in rowboats, and the sky is cloudless, and when Tom turns around to look appraisingly at Mike for the third time he can’t help but laugh a little and say “ _Fine,_ yes, this was a good idea.”

__

The stupid grin on Tom’s face is – also fine.

__

Mike had carted some fishing rods out from the shed, but neither of them seem particularly inclined to stop and cast, so they just keep on paddling lazily. Eventually, they wind up in an enclosed inlet and pull their paddles, just floating in the gently bobbing water. Mike tips his head up to the sun, closes his eyes, and lets himself feel peaceful.

__

When he opens them again a long moment later, Tom is craning his neck around to look at him, a thoughtful expression on his face.

__

“Hey Mikey,” Tom says quietly, turning around. The canoe wobbles precariously – no surprise, Tom is _big_ – as he settles backwards to face Mike. “Can I, uh. I just want to say something. If that’s okay.”

__

_We’re trapped in a canoe on the middle of a lake_ , Mike thinks, a little frantic. _What other option do I have here, exactly?_

__

“Okay,” he says instead, cautious.

__

Tom frowns, looks over at the shore, the trees blowing in the breeze and the family of ducks paddling along in a thatch of reeds. He’s clearly picking out his words, so carefully that Mike’s chest does something weird. He can’t tell if it hurts or not.

__

“After you got hurt,” Tom finally says slowly, “you basically disappeared.” Mike immediately wants to argue, to defend himself, but – alright. And anyway, Tom is continuing. “And I get why, I think. I don’t want to make you feel bad about that, man. You did what you had to do.”

__

He did. Mike _knows_ he did. He’s spent months telling himself this was the only way. It shouldn’t feel so raw and shitty to hear Tom echoing that.

__

Tom has one hand dangling over the edge of the canoe, skimming the top of the water lightly. He tends to fidget sometimes, Mike remembers.

__

Tom looks down. “It’s just that when you did that, I lost a friend. Like, the most important person in my life, maybe. And I know that’s not the same as what you went through, but it still sucked. So I guess that’s why I’m here.” He looks up then, and smiles so shyly that it feels like a kick in Mike’s stomach. “I just needed my best friend, you know?”

__

“Tom,” Mike starts, but he doesn’t know what else to say. That he’s sorry? That it’s the way it had to be? That he missed him too?

__

They’re all true, and none of it really changes anything.

__

The silence stretches out around them, and right when Mike thinks he can’t stand it anymore Tom shrugs, shaking it off and picking up his paddle.

__

“Anyway. Sorry, I didn’t mean to like, ambush you like that, I swear.” He shrugs and smiles sheepishly. “Now, and also like, in general I guess. Showing up unannounced.”

__

To Mike’s surprise, he laughs at that – genuinely laughs.

__

“Could have fooled me, man,” he says, but he’s smiling.

__

“Yeah, well.” Tom doesn’t seem inclined to defend himself, and he doesn’t stop grinning. “The lockout was a convenient excuse, but I probably would have turned up sooner or later anyway.”

__

The way he says it, like it’s so inevitable, settles strangely on Mike. Maybe it was. Maybe it was crazy of him to think he could run from everything forever.

__

The thought should shake him; it unseats everything he’s spent the last year working towards. But it doesn’t, not like it should.

__

“You gonna help paddle, or make me do all the work?” Tom asks him.

__

“Make you do all the work, obviously,” Mike answers automatically. Tom rolls his eyes, but once he turns around Mike picks up his paddle too, and they head home.

__

-

__

The weather has started turning cooler, especially at night, so after dinner Tom lights a bonfire and carts out some beers and stuff to make s’mores. Mike’s not even sure when Tom bought marshmallows, but the two of them set up down on the beach, Mike poking at the slowly catching fire with a stick as the lake laps against the sand.

__

The whole day – the canoe, the fire, Tom steadily by his side – it all makes Mike think of the summer they were up here. It’s almost achingly familiar, a bizarrely realistic reproduction of so many low-key summer nights from a past life. But even stranger than that, the memory doesn’t come with a twist of nausea. It feels… _weird_ , yeah, to let himself look this fully at something he’s been trying so hard to block out, but not gut-churning and awful, like he’d expect it to.

__

He doesn’t want to run from it. He doesn’t want to run from _Tom_ , who’s furrowing his eyebrows across from him and trying to rearrange the logs to his liking without burning his hands.

__

“Oh, hey,” Tom says, glancing up. “The washing machine was making a weird noise today when I was doing some towels.”

__

The fire pops, a spark landing just above the knee of Mike’s pants. He brushes it away absently and tucks his hands inside the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Tom has a smear of marshmallow across one lip, and Mike wants to do something very stupid like lean across the flames and wipe it away.

__

“Yeah, it gets off balance sometimes,” he says instead, forcing himself to look away, staring down into the flames. “You gotta whack the side.” For some reason, his mouth is twisting into a smile, which – they’re just talking about the stupid fucking washer. It shouldn’t make him feel… anything.

__

“Oh,” Tom says, nodding thoughtfully. “Do you think I had too much stuff in it?”

__

“I don’t know.” Mike’s still grinning stupidly. “Maybe.”

__

“Mm,” Tom says. After another minute, he pops open two more beers and hands one over to Mike. He’s happy, he realizes, and would be more than content to stay right here until they’re both tipsy and chilly and the fire burns down, and then go inside and –

__

“Hey,” Tom says, jerking Mike out of it. “You want me to see if I can make pancakes in the morning?”

__

-

__

Tom gets better and better with Grace, finally over that hump of cautiousness where he was clearly worried about dropping her or emotionally scarring her enough to really feel comfortable. Just like Mike did, Tom gets her routine down, learns to tell if she’s fussing because she’s tired, or she needs a new diaper, or just to fuss. He can make her bottles up with one hand while holding her in the other, and suddenly has opinions on baby sunscreen.

__

Mike likes to think he’s building up, like, an immunity to his stomach doing something dumb and embarrassing when Tom swoops Grace up over his head and makes airplane noises – he _thinks_ they’re supposed to be airplane noises, at least – or wrinkles his nose up when she won’t finish her lunch, but. Well. He likes to think a lot of things that aren’t strictly rooted in reality.

__

Probably in any other context, Mike would be panicking about how fully he’s fallen into this new routine, but it’s _Grace_. She’s the one thing that makes him feel relatively rooted and calm. Maybe that’s why he’s endured Tom’s presence with more ease than seems plausible; because Grace swings the whole arrangement into a neutral middleground, a precarious balancing act of the centering and the terrifying.

__

Mike doesn’t really want to look it head on, for fear of disrupting it all, but it’s – yeah. It’s kind of nice.

__

When Mike gets back from PT one afternoon, he’s feeling pretty good. His knee had cooperated better than usual, and he’s enjoying the way the weather is starting to turn. It had been foggy and cool that morning, and something about that pleases him, even though the afternoon has warmed up a bit, the haze mostly burned off by now. He’s thinking about grilling something for dinner, and maybe finding a new show for him and Tom to start on Netflix.

__

He knows it’s dangerously complacent. He _knows_. But fuck, he also wants to let himself enjoy it.

__

As he lets himself in through the garage, he’s surprise to hear Tom’s voice, talking to someone. At first Mike wonders if maybe Carol came over, but then Tom laughs too loud and says “Oh, fuck _you_ , buddy,” so. Probably not Carol.

__

When he gets into the kitchen, he sees Tom in the living room, sprawled on the couch with his phone held out at arm’s length in front of him, clearly Facetiming someone.

__

Mike immediately feels like he’s intruding, and thinks about heading straight for the stairs, even though it’ll be a bitch to get up them, but Tom catches his eye, smiles, and says “Hang on, Burky,” before muting the call and putting his phone against his chest.

__

“Hey,” Mike says cautiously, smiling a little. Hearing Andre’s name is – weird.

__

“Hey, sorry,” Tom says. “Was just catching up with Burky.”

__

“Don’t need to apologize,” Mike says with a shrug. He almost starts to say “you live here too,” and only just catches himself before it comes out. It’s… true, basically. But he’s not sure he wants to say it. He braces himself, and instead asks, “He doing good?”

__

The smile on Tom’s face – the one that he’s clearly trying to hold back – is so pleased that Mike _almost_ feels shitty about it, but for some reason it never quite clicks. Instead he just feels – proud, almost. If not for being able to ask about Andre, then for making Tom smile like that.

__

“I think so. Sounds bored, mostly, but good.”

__

Mike nods, and drums his fingers on the counter, the silence stretching out just a little.

__

“Can you tell him I say hi?” he asks after a minute. He feels fucking _nervous_ saying it, which is just so ridiculous he almost laughs. It’s _Andre_ , one of the goofiest, least intimidating people on earth. Mike has seen him cry, throw up, and have tantrums because he wasn’t getting enough attention more times than he can count. And now here he is, feeling like just the act of asking Tom to say hi on his behalf is somehow monumental.

__

But he doesn’t feel _sick_ , either. Once again, it’s new, and kind of nice.

__

That’s the thing that keeps surprising him the most.

__

If Tom is surprised by it too, he keeps it mostly off his face, just nodding. “Sure, bud. You wanna tell him yourself?”

__

That’s… probably too much, at least for now. Mike shakes his head and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge before heading for the slider.

__

“That’s okay,” he says, letting himself out onto the deck. “You guys finish up. I’ll be out here.”

__

The face Tom makes at him is – Mike’s not sure what the word for it is, but it seems pleased.

__

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “I’ll be out in a few.”

__

Before Mike slides the glass door shut behind him, he hears Tom unmute the call and say “Hey, yeah. Mike says hi.”

__

It’s ten, maybe fifteen minutes later when Tom joins him out on the deck. The lake is a little choppy in the wind, and Mike has his hands tucked into the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Summer is definitely over, and fall is coming down hard and fast.

__

Tom sits down in his usual chair next to him.

__

“Andre says hi too,” he reports casually. “Said it’s good to hear from you.”

__

Mike sits with that for a minute, turning over how that feels. “I’ve missed him,” he says, and exhales heavily. That’s the first time in a long time he’s been willing to admit something like that.

__

He’s not stupid. Mike knows there’s a wide gulf between what he allows himself to think, and what he might otherwise, if he had to room to be less careful. But – well. He’d also thought that _any_ intrusion from the past would send him irrevocably into a downward spiral, and even if his stomach does clench unpleasantly sometimes when he sees Tom in a Caps sweatshirt, he’s… he’s managing. Maybe not perfectly, but he’s doing okay.

__

So maybe it isn’t _as_ dire as it seems. To let himself think about Andre, his dumb goofy smile and the way he can’t spell anything for shit in any of the languages he speaks, and how he needs _constant_ attention, somehow even more than Tom and Mike, who are both _pretty_ needy themselves, all things considered.

__

He hasn’t let himself, up until now, convinced it would be gutting to let himself go down that road. And it _is_ , a little, but – but maybe it’s endurable, too.

__

“He misses you too,” Tom says carefully.

__

“Yeah?”

__

Tom reaches out one foot, and nudges at Mike’s ankle until he looks up. When he does, Tom grins.

__

“Yeah. Whenever you’re ready, he’d love to talk to you.”

__

Mike looks down at the deck again, nodding slowly.

__

“Whenever you’re ready,” Tom repeats.

__

-

__

Mike wakes up sweating, gasping, his heart racing in his chest.

__

He hadn’t had the dream in a while. This one had been – bad.

__

The dream isn’t subtle. In it, he’s suddenly standing in the apartment in Arlington. All the rooms are empty, and not the half-furnished empty from when him and Tom lived there. _Empty_ empty, no furniture, no belongings, not even a sound. The windows show blank gray sky outside.

__

In the dream, Mike wants to say Tom’s name, but his voice isn’t working. He walks over to the windows to look into the empty space – not just the sky, but _everything_. All the buildings and landscape are gone, all the people, and it’s just endless fog.

__

Behind him he hears the front door slam. He turns around, but there _isn’t_ a door, just a blank wall where it should be, and that’s usually when he feels it.

__

Anyone who says you can’t feel pain in a dream is lying.

__

Mike’s leg bursts apart in crystallized shards of sensation and wrongness that aren’t quite _hurt_ , but are close enough. When he looks down, it’s a mess of gore, bone and muscle and blood. He thinks, _make it stop_ , and puts his hands to the wound, trying to keep everything where it should be – to keep his insides on the _inside_ – but he can’t, his hands are slick and warm and red and there’s shattered bone in his hand, gristly pieces and pulsing veins and he can’t fix it, he can’t put himself back together and there’s no one _there_ –

__

And that’s when he wakes up.

__

It’s not with a jerk. He wakes up slowly, sure it was all real. He resigns himself to the knowledge that he’ll jerk back the covers and see the same carnage from a moment ago. It’s only after several long inhales that it clicks: dream. No pain. His bed, and safety. Those things are real.

__

Under the covers, his hands grope blindly on his leg.

__

His scar is there, right where it should be. No blood, no bone. His hands come away cool and dry.

__

He’s still terrified.

__

There’s a long stretch of time that feels in-between and unreal. Mike turns the lamp on his bedside table on, low and yellow light that doesn’t quite reach the whole room. He breathes in and out like usual, his standard pattern, and then digs around in the nightstand drawer until he feels the bottle of Lorazepams. His water bottle is empty, so he swallows one dry.

__

It’s not new. He knows how this goes, and he knows that eventually, his heart rate will slow; his hands will stop shaking, the press of the nightmare will feel less immediate, and if he’s lucky maybe he’ll fall back asleep.

__

He can’t stay in bed, though. He doesn’t know what he _can_ do, but he knows that if he stays here, he’s just going to get tangled up even worse. And Tom is downstairs; Tom is there, Tom is his friend, and Mike suddenly feels viscerally grateful for Tom’s presence, so relieved for once that he’s not the only one in the house.

__

Mike tries to keep his footsteps on the stairs light, just because it’s late and it feels appropriate to mind the silence. It’s not easy with a cane, though.

__

Downstairs, the lights are off, but the door to the guest room is open, a blueish light shining out from it. Mike slowly makes his way over, and when he gets to the doorframe he peers in carefully. Tom is still awake, sprawled out on the bed with the television on. He’s resting against the headboard with his hands propped behind his head, but when he sees Mike he sits up.

__

“Hey,” Tom says, frowning a little. “Everything alright?”

__

Mike doesn’t even know what to say to that. He doesn’t know what he’s _doing_ , only that he can’t not do anything anymore.

__

He shuffles into the room and climbs carefully onto the bed. He’s just going on instinct, now, because if he stops to think about what he’s doing he’ll freeze up, and he just – he needs this. Tom doesn’t say anything, just makes space for him and opens his arms, letting Mike curl up against him.

__

“Mikey?” Tom asks.

__

Mike presses his face against Tom’s chest, breathing in shakily. He can’t remember the last time he was this close to someone. He guesses it must have been with Tom, though, maybe sprawling out on their couch to watch TV or napping in a hotel room together on the road.

__

Like nothing has changed at all since then, Tom just puts his hand between Mike’s shoulder blades, big and warm. Mike knows he needs to say something – anything – but he can’t quite get there yet.

__

If he closes his eyes and ignores the twinge in his leg, it could be two years ago. This could be just another not-quite-normal moment that doesn’t have any urgency behind it. Mike’s thought about kissing Tom before, and he’s pretty sure Tom thought about it back then too, but two years ago, it could wait.

__

Now, though. Now Mike has to admit he still hasn’t stopped thinking about it. Now he still wants to, only it can’t wait anymore.

__

He pulls back, just a little. They’re tucked together, the glow of the TV behind them and the soft comforter beneath them, and Mike thinks if he doesn’t touch Tom he’s going to fall apart.

__

Carefully, he puts one hand on the edge of Tom’s jaw. Before, it would have been a weirdly intimate gesture, even for them, and now, here, he knows it must be clear what it means. Tom’s face goes soft and surprised, but he doesn’t pull away.

__

“Mike,” he says again, and this time he sounds – hopeful, maybe.

__

“Everything’s all fucked up,” Mike says, laughing hoarsely. He keeps his hand on Tom’s face, the two of them staying close like that, an island. “So fucked up.”

__

“Is it because of me?” Tom asks carefully. “Because I’m here?”

__

And Mike wants to say yes, wants it to be that simple, but – that’s not it.

__

Things have been fucked up for a long time.

__

“No,” Mike says. “No, it’s just – me.” He takes a breath. “I think it’s just… harder to pretend, with you here.”

__

Tom’s eyes do something sad, but for once it doesn’t gall Mike, or feel like a stab of pity.

__

“I hate this,” Mike says quietly, tipping his head down just a little, looking at his lap. At his stupid knee, stiff and unbendable, this tiny, traitorous tangle of flesh and bone that has changed the shape of his entire life. “Being up here, all by myself, with just my… my shitty thoughts for company. I just don’t know how to do anything else.”

__

He feels more than sees Tom lean forward too, and then their foreheads are just touching. Mike’s heart is beating too quickly.

__

Tom is right there. It strikes Mike anew how fucking unlikely that is. He’d been so sure Tom was relegated to the past, that he’d missed the window where he was able to have Tom in his life at _all_ , and now he’s here. He’s not running from Mike and his baggage and this small, strange life he has now. He wants to be _part_ of it, enough to elbow his way in even when Mike made that next to impossible.

__

Suddenly that doesn’t feel like anything short of a miracle.

__

Mike tips his head up so he can look at Tom, and kisses him.

__

Tom makes a soft, surprised sound, but he doesn’t startle. He just brings his hands up carefully to Mike’s face, letting his thumb brush the hinge of his jaw, the edge of his cheekbone. He kisses almost like he’s nervous, and Mike – Mike loves him.

__

Tom’s mouth is soft and warm, and when Mike pulls away just an inch to catch his breath, he already misses it.

__

“Mike,” Tom says, eyes wide and sounding overwhelmed. “Mikey, fuck.”

__

“Yeah,” Mike agrees.

__

“I’ve wanted to do that for, like. A really long time,” Tom admits. It comes out a little desperate, and that’s kind of reassuring. That Mike isn’t the only one who feels like he’s wading out into deep water here, unsure what he’s doing but positive he can’t stop anyway. If they both don’t know what they’re doing, maybe they can just – not know together.

__

“To be fair,” Mike says hoarsely. His heart is beating too quickly, still, but it feels different. “You didn’t really do it. I did.”

__

Tom blinks, and then barks out a weird, helpless sounding laugh. His hands are still on Mike’s face.

__

“Oh my God. I can’t believe I’ve been in love with you for like, years, dude. You’re such an asshole.”

__

Mike’s chest thumps strangely. In _love_. That should be – a lot. It _is_ , but maybe in the way Mike’s been needing for a while now.

__

“You have?” he asks. He feels _nervous,_ somehow, even though it’s Tom’s big confession, not his.

__

But Tom just nods, almost apologetically. “Sorry if that’s… I dunno. But it’s true. I told you, I’m trying to be, like, emotionally honest.” He huffs out a laugh. “It’s scary.”

__

And, God, Mike knows. He knows how exactly how scary it is, and that’s what gives him the courage to lean in and kiss Tom again.

__

It’s such a strange, thrilling twist on what seems so natural – to touch Tom, to be near Tom – and Mike almost whimpers, because he doesn’t know if he can’t stop now that he’s started.

__

He puts it out of his mind, just kisses and kisses until Tom leans them back carefully without pulling away from Mike, kissing him and touching his face while arranging them on the pillows in a way that keeps Mike’s knee straight and supported. Even with Tom’s tongue soft on his lips, Mike has enough awareness left that the gesture makes him want to cry.

__

They end up on their sides, the hunch of Tom’s big shoulders looming over Mike when he pulls away to look at him. He knows Tom, and he loves him. He doesn’t want to let him go.

__

But he doesn’t have to, at least not yet, because Tom is carefully running his hand across Mike’s ribs, over his t-shirt but still warm and solid and ruiningly intimate. Tom’s just wearing boxers and a t-shirt, and for the first time in a long time Mike feels that tug of desire – not just wanting to get off as expediently as possible but of specifically wanting another person, their hands on him and to feel the heat of their skin, the press of their muscles against his.

__

Not just another person. _Tom_.

__

He keeps kissing Tom until his plush lips go red, his skin warm when Mike gets up the nerve to slide his hands under the hem of Tom’s shirt and up his back. When he sits up enough to pull it off, Mike goes temporarily cross-eyed at the sight of him before dragging Tom back to kiss him again, more frantically this time.

__

“We should, uh. Talk about this,” Mike says eventually, barely bothering to pull away from Tom’s mouth. Tom leans back when he does, but Mike just reels him back, kissing him harder. “Not right now, I mean. Right now…”

__

He thinks it’s pretty obvious what he wants right now, the way his dick is getting hard in his sweats and pressing against Tom’s hip, but just in case it isn’t, he takes a breath and drags a hand down to the front of Tom’s underwear. He’s hard, too, and he practically yelps when Mike touches his cock through the fabric.

__

“You sure?” Tom asks, even as he jerks towards Mike’s touch. “I mean, I really – but – if you –”

__

There are about twelve smartass responses on the tip of Mike’s tongue, about literal years of dragging it out probably being enough, and how he’s a big boy, he’s pretty sure he knows when he wants to have sex with someone or not, and how Tom ought to be better at reading someone’s signals by now, but all that comes out when he opens his mouth is, “Jesus, _yes_.”

__

He tugs at the waist of Tom’s boxers, then, and Tom actually _blushes_ a little when he lifts his hips and kicks them off.

__

Mike is – definitely staring, which feels impolite, especially given how nervous Tom looks now that he’s naked, but Mike thinks he’s fucking _allowed_. Tom’s dick isn’t exactly new territory, but Mike’s definitely only seen it hard, like, once, by accident.

__

Not like this. Not with Tom making those big nervous eyes at him, waiting for Mike to do – something. 

__

Mike swallows hard, and pulls Tom close.

__

He likes to think that he’d be this immediately overwhelmed by _anyone_ , given how long it’s been since he’s even talked to someone outside of the circle of his immediate family and therapist, let alone had sex. And that’s probably part of it, but he’s pretty sure the fact that’s it _Tom_ is also what’s making his heart pound and his head spin. Mike before the accident had gotten laid plenty, but now just letting Tom pull off his shirt and sweatpants has Mike practically panting.

__

Tom leans back to look at him, and as if he’s on a delay, Mike’s brain kicks in, a familiar shame springing to life. He knows he looks different – of fucking _course_ he does. Weight has fallen off him over the last year in exactly the way you’d expect it to, going from a professional athlete to someone who can barely hobble up and down a flight of stairs once a day. And usually he doesn’t mind, really, because in the grand scheme of it, who cares? But now Tom’s _looking_ at him, and nobody’s really looked at him in so long, and Mike can’t help but thinking – maybe he’s not the person Tom remembers. The one he wants.

__

“I know I’m…” he starts, twisting his mouth up a little, not sure what to say. He just wants to acknowledge it first.

__

But Tom just shakes his head a little and swallows, leaning in close again and kissing Mike a little desperately. “You look so good,” he says, his voice raw.

__

And Mike doesn’t know what to do with that, not really, but he decides, fuck it. He’s not going to argue.

__

When Tom runs his fingers over Mike’s hip and makes a noise like a whimper, he has to shut his eyes and pull Tom closer. Their chests and hips and fuck, their cocks are flush as Mike just _squeezes_ , holds Tom as tightly as he can, like he’s working something out of the muscles in his arms; like Tom might disintegrate beneath him if Mike doesn’t hold on.

__

Fuck, maybe he might.

__

“Okay, I’m,” Mike says, because he really does think he better start now or die from waiting, and then he reaches down between them, running his fingertips and then the palm of his hand over Tom’s cock.

__

Tom shudders with his whole body.

__

Mike can do this.

__

He jerks Tom off slowly, feeling overwhelmed _himself_ when Tom starts to gasp and pant almost immediately, burying his face in the crook of Mike’s neck. Tom’s dick is _big_ , just like the rest of him, and if Mike starts thinking about – everything, he’s going to lose it. So instead he focuses on the glide of his fist, the curl of his fingers, the way his spare hand is gripping Tom’s hip and his nose is tucked into Tom’s hair.

__

“I’m gonna last, like, an embarrassingly short time,” Tom warns him, pulling his head up a little to look at Mike. His face is flushed, his breath uneven, and Mike feels – accomplished.

__

He barely recognizes it at first, but that’s undeniably what it is. _He’s_ the one making Tom’s eyes flutter, his hips jerk unsteadily, overwhelmed like he’s never gotten a handjob before, and the joyful little shiver it starts up in his stomach is foreign and wonderful.

__

He smiles, and kisses Tom again while he twists his hand between them. “Good,” he says, pressing his face to Tom’s neck while Tom gasps. He smells like he always has, so familiar, and Mike rests his lips over Tom’s pulse when he comes with a strangled noise, hot over Mike’s hand.

__

It takes Tom a while to compose himself, but Mike’s pretty happy to stay right where he is, cock pressed against Tom’s hip, preening a little.

__

“Jesus,” Tom mutters eventually. “Sorry.”

__

“Don’t fuckin’ – apologize, dummy,” Mike says, resisting the urge to laugh.

__

“I lasted like, a minute.” Tom looks like he’d be offended by himself if he wasn’t so wrung out from coming. Mostly he looks a little bleary, come-dumb but happy.

__

“It’s hot,” Mike admits. Emotional honesty, right?

__

“Yeah?” Tom does that earnest thing with his eyebrows, and smiles. Mike resists the urge to roll his eyes fondly, and instead just kind of pointedly nods at his own dick, which is basically harder than ever.

__

Tom follows his gaze, and then shudders. “I want to blow you,” he says after a second, his voice already back to desperate. “Like, really badly.” His hands are nervously drawing up and down Mike’s hip, the top of his thigh, and Mike leans up to kiss him, missing a little and catching the corner of Tom’s mouth.

__

“I, uh,” Mike says. “Yeah. That would be… yeah.”

__

Tom’s hands are skittering nervously as he settles Mike back against the pillows, taking so much care with the tangled scar of his knee that it feels somehow more overwhelming than the idea of Tom sucking his dick.

__

Although – that’s a lot, too.

__

Tom seems nervous when he moves down between Mike’s legs, his hand and his lips not really coordinating at first, but when his mouth gets around Mike’s dick it’s so good he has to tip his head back and groan.

__

Immediately, it’s pretty clear this isn’t the first time Tom’s sucked dick. Mike’s maybe gonna have to ask him about that later.

__

He holds out a little longer than Tom did, at least, but not by a whole lot. It’s just that the thought of Tom’s broad shoulders hunched between his legs while he sucks Mike’s dick has been a pretty prominent fantasy for Mike in the past, and actually _seeing_ it, getting to reach down and carefully touch Tom’s hair, his ears, his jaw, it all makes Mike’s toes curl and his spine arch.

__

Tom doesn’t pull back when Mike grunts out “I’m gonna–” He swallows Mike’s come, and then sits back, looking dazed and pink and unfairly gorgeous, smiling almost shyly up at Mike as he wipes his lips with one thumb.

__

And then he sprawls out against Mike again, tucked up against his chest, sighing happily and pressing a kiss to his collarbone like he’s never been more satisfied.

__

Mike is definitely gonna die.

__

They lay like that for a few minutes, catching their breath, and then a thought occurs to Mike; one of the sort that usually flares into something bitter. Mike tries his best to recognize that, and then put it aside, taking one steadying breath, and then another.

__

“I’ll return the favor,” he says measuredly, and Jesus, he’s somehow more nervous to get this stupid sentence out than he was the first time he actually _gave_ a blowjob. “When… when my knee feels better.”

__

His heart is beating again, but in that awful panicked animal way now. Acknowledging his knee, and its limitations, being the first one to bring it up – he so strictly doesn’t do that. Not ever. And now he has, now he’s put it out there and maybe Tom is going to realize all over again just how damaged and bent up Mike is, and he’s going to regret everything –

__

Except Tom just shrugs, peering up at him with his big, earnest eyes, and then stretches up and kisses Mike again, easy like they’ve done it a thousand times before.

__

“Yeah, okay,” he says, smiling dumb and easy. Jesus, Mike loves him. “No rush. We got time.”

__

-

__

Mike doesn’t fall asleep right away, even though it’s late, and he ought to be exhausted. He _is_ , sort of, and he’s beyond comfortable lying with his head resting on the warm expanse of Tom’s bare chest, but his mind – of course – can’t quite turn off. It’s close, though, and he doesn’t feel trapped or panicky at the whirl of his thoughts, which is a nice change. He thinks maybe for once it’s not that he’s being consumed by the mess in his head; that instead, he wants to talk about it. To figure it out with someone’s help.

__

Beneath him, Tom is breathing steadily, eyes shut and a peaceful expression on his face, but when Mike whispers “Hey,” he opens his eyes, and smiles so softly that Mike barely knows what to do with it.

__

“It makes it better that you’re here, too,” Mike says. “When I said that it makes it harder to pretend that I’m not all… fucked up, that’s true, but maybe that’s a good thing. I’ve been so stuck in my own shit.”

__

“You’re going through a lot,” Tom says, almost defensively.

__

“Yeah, well, I’m handling it shittily.”

__

The admission feels – it takes Mike a minute to place it, actually, but when he does he realizes that _this_ is the feeling of a weight lifting off his shoulder. He’s known for a while that whatever walls he was building around himself weren’t exactly sustainable, but to admit it out loud is another thing.

__

“I love you too,” he adds before Tom can argue with him about Mike’s coping mechanisms. “Just – for the record.”

__

It seems so obvious, but the relief that visibly comes over Tom’s face sends a guilty flare through Mike’s stomach. The reality of how ruthlessly he’d cut Tom out of his life is startling on this side of it, and it’s probably going to take him a while to reconcile himself with it.

__

“It’s okay if you wanna like, take this slow,” Tom says, almost nervous, but still unable to hide the smile that’s pulling at his mouth. “I know we’re coming at this from different places…”

__

And – maybe. At the very least, that’s true in a literal sense. Tom’s life is still in D.C., and Mike’s… well, it’s generous to say his life is _here_ , in the cabin, because more than anything, this is just where he’s been hiding from it. Maybe he hid so well he doesn’t know where to pinpoint his life anymore.

__

Or maybe it doesn’t exist out there at all anymore, no longer something to be carefully avoided; maybe it’s just gone, now, and Mike has to figure out a new one.

__

They lay there for a while, quiet in the late darkness.

__

“They weren’t gonna keep me, you know,” Mike says quietly, not looking at Tom while he does. “The Caps. I was gonna go somewhere else, or get sent down. Maybe both.”

__

“No you weren’t,” Tom says immediately, but Mike shakes his head, cuts him off.

__

“I probably was, though. I’m not dumb.”

__

Tom looks like he really wants to argue, but he doesn’t.

__

“The really fucked up thing about that,” Mike says, “is that it means, like. Maybe in a way it was good I got hurt?”

__

“It _wasn’t_ ,” Tom says forcefully.

__

“What if it was, though? What if I wasn’t gonna cut it, and this was just – saving me the embarrassment of taking a few more years to figure it out?”

__

The noise Tom makes is pained, and personal.

__

“I’m not – saying that to make you feel bad for me, or like you need to say how great I was,” Mike explains. “I just can’t help thinking it, sometimes, and all that does is remind me that – that my whole sense of like, happiness was hung up on this one thing. On playing. And now I don’t have that anymore, so like… where does that leave me, you know?”

__

“Well,” Tom says carefully. “What makes you happy now?”

__

And that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Not a fucking easy one, either. Mike exhales, and really thinks about it. Tom’s hand moves softly up and down his back while he waits.

__

“Grace,” Mike says eventually, the first thing he thinks of that feels right. “Taking care of her. I mean, my whole family is important to me, obviously, but that’s – I like that. She’s – always there, and she isn’t just, like, stuck with me, you know? She needs me, and – and I probably need her too. So. I guess that’s what makes me happiest these days.”

__

It’s such a weird thing to say out loud. Mike can’t tell if it’s pathetic or what, but it’s _true_ , so maybe that’s all that’s important. Because when he allows himself to think about his life from here out – and not just in the increment of days and weeks, but as this broad, sprawling thing – he thinks, that’s what could steady him. Someone who’s there; someone he _can’t_ lose.

__

He just has to figure out how to let himself have that.

__

Mike looks up at Tom. Tom is here, and he hasn’t left. Tom has seen him at his best and his shittiest, and he’s still here, no matter how hard Mike tried to shove him away. That has to count for a whole hell of a lot.

__

Mike tucks his face into Tom’s chest, and tightens his arms around him. With his eyes closed, he lets himself breathe in and out, steady. After a long moment, he feels Tom shift hesitantly above him, and then press his lips against Mike’s hair.

__

“You know I need you too, right?” Tom says eventually.

__

Mike shifts back so he can look at him.

__

“Because I do, man. I was a mess without you. Maybe you guessed that when I just showed up here, though,” Tom says, a little sheepishly.

__

“I know,” Mike admits. “I mean – fuck, me too. But I mean… I know what I need, now, and I don’t know if it’s fair to ask you for it all.”

__

He can’t quite bring himself to say that he can’t just be Tom’s friend anymore. That old holding pattern was fine when he felt like he had the whole world stretching out in front of him, but now he just – he can’t do that. He needs Tom, all the way.

__

“Mike,” Tom says, twisting their fingers together. “I’m all yours, man. However you want, that’s… that’s what I want too. I promise.”

__

Mike wants to ask if he’s sure. If he’s _absolutely positive_. He wants to make Tom _prove_ it, that he really needs Mike as much as Mike needs him. Because the thought of putting it out there and then in a week, a month, having to hear Tom say, _hey, actually_ , before drifting away again –- Mike can’t go through that.

__

But where the fuck does it leave him if he can’t even start _trying_ to trust in something?

__

It leaves him right back in the hospital that first week, fucked up on Vicodin and feeling dead inside, staring at his mangled leg, sure of exactly one thing through the haze of pain and panic and drugs: that everything he thought he could count on was gone.

__

“Okay,” he says now. “Let’s… try this out.”

__

“Yeah?” Tom asks, so hopeful that Mike can’t imagine what he’s done to deserve it.

__

“Yeah,” he says, trying to sound more sure than he feels.

__

Fuck knows how it’s all going to go, but if it means that for now he can shut his eyes, let the Lorazepam and Tom’s warmth and weight and wheezy, deviated-septum breathing lull him to sleep, well. That isn’t nothing.

__

-

__

Things are weirdly unchanged, actually. Tom makes breakfast like always in the morning, his same decent if not exactly gourmet scrambled eggs and toast. Mike goes to PT in the afternoon, and the next day Grace comes over, and they watch Peppa Pig with her and try to get her to stand up while she clutches onto their thumbs.

__

It makes him think that this could all be a little easier than he’d thought.

__

There are differences, obviously. Like when Tom leans over to rest his head on Mike’s shoulder when they’re on the couch, and Mike hesitates for a second before putting his arm around Tom, letting him snuggle in closer. Even _that’s_ not unusual in the grand scheme of it all, but the way Tom laces their fingers together is.

__

The way he follows Mike upstairs to bed at night and kisses him after they brush their teeth side by side, though, and not just once but the next night and the next and the next, that’s – almost too good to be true.

__

Mike _has_ learned some stuff from Jeremy, despite the fact that sometimes he’s unwilling to admit it. Now he’s grateful for that, because he knows he’s going to need that help giving Tom what he deserves, building something stable for both of them. Mike knows, for example, the importance of being honest about what he needs, and what his limitations are. It’s too tempting to just let it all unfold on its own and hope for the best without talking about it, but he knows that’s not how he operates anymore. At least, not how he _should_.

__

Tom grills steaks for them one night, and it’s cold enough outside that when he comes back in he’s shivering in his hoodie and toque. He sets the tray on the island and drapes himself over Mike’s back like a koala, clearly trying to steal away all his warmth. He puts his freezing hands under the hem of Mike’s sweatshirt and against his stomach, and Mike yelps and kicks him in the ankle in return.

__

They actually eat at the table, not hunched over the coffee table, which might be what gives Mike the momentum to clear his throat as they’re finishing.

__

“Is it okay if we, like. Talk about what we’re doing here real quick?” he asks nervously, tracing the edge of his glass with his thumbnail. God, he sounds stupid. “Sorry.

__

“No, yeah, of course,” Tom says, and smiles a little self consciously. “Um. I might not be good at it? But I’ll try.” He hunches his shoulders up a little bit, and Mike takes a minute to figure out what to say.

__

“I don’t wanna blow this,” he says finally, flexing his fingers nervously. He feels _stupid_ , but that’s not a good enough reason to give up. “I’m happy about – us. But I’m still not, uh, in the best place. Obviously.”

__

“I know,” Tom says, all earnestly. “I mean – I’ve thought about it, and I know it’s not gonna be like it was, and that’s okay. I think it took me a while, but, uh. Yeah. I don’t want you to think I want, like… the old Latts, or anything. I just want you how you are.”

__

Something hot curls through Mike’s stomach, and it takes him a moment to figure out that it’s nothing shameful or embarrassed; it’s _happiness_.

__

“Alright. Well. You’re gonna need to be patient with me.” He thinks about how he’s spent months and months building this fortress of solitude up around him. It’s probably nothing you can dismantle all at once. “But you’re probably gonna have to push me a little, too. I get kind of… ” Mike glances around the cabin. “Stuck in my ways.”

__

That’s one way to put it.

__

“Okay,” Tom says, like it’s that easy. “What else do you need?”

__

“I don’t think I can have it be a secret,” Mike says after a breath, looking down. Because maybe this will be the dealbreaker. He’s not sure where Tom is on that aspect of it. He just knows that with everything else, the idea of subterfuge and secrecy and shit, he just – doesn’t have the energy.

__

But Tom just nods thoughtfully. “Okay. So what do you think? I can talk to my agent about, like, a plan. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, I mean, but we could like… put something on Instagram, I dunno. Whatever you want.”

__

Mike sort of blinks at that.

__

“Oh. I didn’t really mean, like – you would do that?”

__

Tom shrugs. “Yeah, man. I told you. I’m in this.”

__

For a second, Mike is blindingly jealous. That for Tom, everything’s as simple as deciding something, and having that be enough.

__

But then he thinks, that’s not fair. He _knows_ that Tom thinks and overthinks just like anyone else, and as easy as it can be to forget, a good part of him is just bluster. He needs to be reassured, he needs to be validated, and Mike’s just sort of let himself forget that because, what? It’s easier to be resentful than to admit that Tom’s probably making such an effort to be so sure on both of their behalfs because Mike can’t do it himself?

__

He takes a deep breath. “Okay. That’s… thanks. I don’t want to go that far, though, at least not yet. But, uh. We could. Tell our families, maybe? And – some of the guys.”

__

He tries to think of the last time he’s said _the guys_ to mean his old teammates. Long enough that it feels weird as fuck, but not necessarily that gut-wrenching weird he’d been bracing for.

__

“They’ll be happy,” Tom says, a dopey smile on his face. “I mean, to hear from you, mostly, but also… for us, I think?”

__

Mike, very cautiously, lets himself believe that. Just for a moment.

__

“And if any of them aren’t?” he asks neutrally. Because if that’s the case, it’s really Tom who’s going to bear the brunt of it.

__

“Then fuck ‘em,” Tom says decisively, his shoulders squaring up a little like they do when he’s ready for a fight.

__

It makes Mike chest tighten, in the best way. He’d forgotten what it felt like when Tom fights for him; how he’s always ready to do so.

__

It doesn’t strike Mike until later, when they’re on the couch watching TV, Tom’s head resting in his lap, that he hasn’t asked Tom what _he_ needs from all of this.

__

It takes Mike a little while to gather up his nerves and ask, but when he does, Tom just tips his head up at him, not even bothering to sit up, and smiles.

__

“I just don’t want you to disappear when you think shit’s like, too hard.” He doesn’t say it with blame, or disappointment, even though Mike still winces a little. “I know it’s not gonna be easy all the time, but that’s okay. As long as you’re okay with figuring it out together, that’s all I need. To know you won’t ghost on me again.”

__

It stings Mike’s pride a little, how low that bar is. Even if it’s fair. Tom deserves as much; he deserves more, and Mike resolves to try and live up to that. “I won’t,” he says. “I’ll try really hard, at least.”

__

Tom smiles, and rubs his cheek against Mike’s thigh, almost cat-like in his contentedness. “Cool. Me too.”

__

-

__

The next time they’re at his parents for dinner, Mike waits until halfway through the meal; when there’s a lull in conversation, he tries to swallow around the nervous knot in his throat and reaches over to take Tom’s hand. He rubs his thumb across Tom’s knuckles, takes another unsteady breath, and then, glancing over until Tom gives him a little smile and a nod, brings their hands up to the table, still clutched together.

__

His mom notices first. When she does, she says “Oh,” almost to herself, and then smiles. 

__

“Tom’s gonna be staying with me for a while,” Mike says to all of them carefully, looking down at his plate, Tom’s big hand in his next to it. “Just – so you guys know.”

__

There’s only a slight pause – although while it’s happening, it feels like it goes on for a fucking year – before Carol says “Well, _good_ ,” from his other side, firmly.

__

And that’s that.

__

If anyone seems particularly surprised by the announcement – or the grip Mike keeps on Tom’s hand through the rest of dinner – they’re doing a phenomenal job of hiding it, and his family’s not that good at acting. It must not be much of a shock. Mike wonders if they’d been waiting for it all this time too, in the way he still feels weird acknowledging he was.

__

Dinner resumes; Jimmy and their dad end up arguing about baseball, Gracie throws her sippy cup on the ground, and even though Mike lets go of Tom’s hand to pick it up for her, there’s something unexpectedly nice in the knowledge that he could just – reach over again, whenever he wants.

__

He does; he links their last two fingers together, and drains his glass of wine with a smile curling across his lips. Tom’s grinning too, kind of stupidly, and Mike’s chest feels like it’s going to burst.

__

“We’re happy for you,” his mom tells him in the kitchen later when they go to get dessert and refill everyone’s wine glasses. Out in the living room Mike’s dad is talking to Jimmy and Tom about – boats, maybe? He’s been talking about buying a new pontoon for a while now – and Tom is nodding along like a bobblehead, clearly incapable of turning off his _trying to impress the adults_ face. It makes Mike smile all over again, and he tries to hide it by taking the wine opener from his mom and yanking the cork out of the bottle. He’s obviously failing, though, because his mom is still making that happy, knowing mom-face.

__

“Thanks,” he says. “I… am too. Happy, I mean.”

__

It’s weird to admit it out loud. Nice, though.

__

“I don’t want to mind your business too much,” his mom says, taking her glass from him, “but – well. You’ve brought home nice people before, but Tom is just… _Tom_.”

__

Mike knows exactly what she means. “Yeah,” he says, squinting happily at Tom in the next room. He loves him, that stupid earnest face and floppy hair and ugly sweatshirt from high school. “I know.”

__

Out in the living room, Jimmy is starting to get shouty about something. Mike raises his eyebrows at his mom, and she laughs. “Better go rescue him.”

__

Mike leaves his cane, walking slowly and deliberately out to the living room. Jimmy’s yelling about boat lifts, and Tom has basically given up trying to get a word in, just looking back and forth between Jimmy and Mike’s dad like it’s a tennis match. When Mike gets near, Tom shifts over, making room for Mike beside him, lifting his arm over Mike’s shoulder when he sits.

__

Mike sort of – freezes for a minute before remembering, _oh, right_. Nobody blinks, and Jimmy doesn’t even interrupt his rant. Carol reappears with Grace, who she’s changed into pajamas, and rolls her eyes sympathetically at Mike before going back to bouncing Grace on her lap. Nobody seems particularly interested in Mike at all, not the way he’s stretching out his knee carefully or leaning into Tom’s shoulder with slow deliberation.

__

Mike exhales, a breath he feels like he’s been holding for a long time.

__

By ten Jimmy and Carol have left, sleeping Grace in tow, but Mike and Tom are still lingering on the sofa, too tipsy from wine to move. Mike’s dad has been upstairs for an hour already after falling asleep in his recliner and being poked awake by Mike’s mom at least three times, and she’s been in the kitchen for the last twenty minutes putting a last load of dishes in the dishwasher and turning off lights. Mike’s spent most of that time trying to decide how high he can get away with putting his hand on Tom’s thigh and trying not to grin too smugly when Tom squirms.

__

“The two of you aren’t driving home tonight,” Mike’s mom tells them when she finally reappears, drying her hands on a tea towel. Which, obviously. Tom’s whole face is drunk-flushed and he can’t stop smiling, and Mike’s not much better. “The bed in Michael’s old room is made up, you can stay there. I’ll wake you for breakfast.”

__

She kisses them both on the cheek when she heads upstairs, easily and without hesitation. “Nice to have the whole family home for a night,” she says, turning off the overhead light, and then she’s gone.

__

“Well,” Mike says, trying to swallow down the stupid laughter he feels bubbling up. “There you go. You’re officially family. Better not dump me now.”

__

“I wasn’t before?” Tom asks, pouting, and Mike snorts.

__

“Yeah, okay. You’ve been in since day one, bud. We all know she likes you better than me.”

__

“Shut up, she doesn’t,” Tom says, nudging their shoulders together. “And anyway, I’m not gonna. Dump you, I mean.”

__

Mike wonders if he’s ever gonna stop blushing like a teenager every time Tom says something earnest like that. On the other hand, of all the wildly outsized emotions he’s navigated in the last year – yeah. This isn’t bad in comparison.

__

He tries to think of something smart-assed to say, but can’t get there. “Alright, well. Good.”

__

Upstairs, they’re entirely too big to fit in the single guest bed set up in Mike’s old room, even with the trundle pulled out, but they’re both still drunk enough that it doesn’t matter. Tom faceplants on the mattress while Mike struggles out of his jeans in the dim light of the desk lamp, trying to look sober even while he’s precariously balancing one arm on top of the dresser and his other shoulder against the wall for support. Tom laughs at him anyway, and Mike flips him off before limping over to the bed and flopping down next to him, the springs creaking.

__

“Wanna hear something embarrassing?” Tom asks him, turning over, his face almost too open and handsome for Mike to deal with.

__

“Uh, yeah. Obviously.”

__

“The first Thanksgiving we came here,” Tom starts, grinning a little. “You remember that?”

__

Mike remembers. That first year in Washington, only a couple months into them living together. Tom had come home with him for no particular reason, which had seemed so natural at the time anyway. Like they weren’t together enough already, living and working together; like they couldn’t even be apart for two days.

__

Mike wonders how long the two of them had been tangled up so inextricably, orbiting around the fact that they were closer than roomies or lineys or anything without being ready to acknowledge it. Probably longer than either one of them had realized, even until now.

__

“Yeah,” Mike says. “I remember. What about it?”

__

“It’s stupid,” Tom says, ducking his head a little. Mike wants to roll on top of him. “But we were sleeping up here then too, and I, um. The whole time I kept think about how I… really wanted to kiss you.” He glances down, smiling bashfully.

__

“Oh, wow, buddy,” Mike says, trying not to blush like an idiot. “ _So_ embarrassing for you. You know you kissed me like, five minutes ago, right?”

__

“Shut up,” Tom says, wrinkling his nose and smiling. “It was embarrassing at the _time_. I had such a crush on you, man, and then we were like, in your old bedroom, and I kept thinking, like, what it would be like to kiss you, or –”

__

Mike raises his eyebrows. They’re close enough that he can see Tom’s eyelashes, even in the low light. He’s pretty sure he know what that expression on Tom’s face means. “Or?”

__

“Or like. Touch you.” Tom’s absolutely blushing now, and God, Mike likes that. Likes how much Tom wants, how sometimes it seems to embarrass him, but he barrels ahead anyway.

__

“Yeah?” Mike asks. Maybe he’s just tipsy and happy and a little reckless, but he’s absolutely going to dig his thumbs into this, prod at Tom a little bit. “You were thinking about getting in my pants in my childhood bedroom?” He wraps his fingers around Tom’s wrists lightly, just barely squeezes.

__

Tom squirms a little and makes a pitiful face. “You were so hot,” he says. “You still are, I mean. And this bed is really small, okay?”

__

Mike grins, and pulls Tom closer. “Yeah, it definitely is.”

__

Tom is warm up against Mike, and he feels smug and delighted when he kisses him and Tom whimpers a little. He still so unused to thinking of himself as someone who can be _wanted_ , not just tolerated, and it burns him up in a wonderful way.

__

“And the walls aren’t that thick,” Mike continues. “So, you know. Better be quiet if you wanna fulfill your fantasy, here.”

__

Whatever noise Tom’s about to make, it gets muffled when Mike kisses him.

__

“Seriously, babe,” he continues, feeling a little thrill. Actually, the walls are pretty solid, and his parents are way on the opposite side of the house, but that’s not really the point. The point is that Tom’s semi is already visible through his jeans, and Mike wants to touch. He wants to be the person Tom thought about, that Tom wanted in secret, a whole and real person that exists not just inside his own head, his own bubble. He wants to be real enough to take Tom apart.

__

“Do you think you can tell me what you thought about some more?” Mike continues, reaching down to the button on Tom’s jeans. He exhales heavily when Mike’s fingers graze his cock. “Or will that make you make too much noise?”

__

“I wanted to blow you,” Tom says, a low, wrecked whisper. “And I felt bad about it because you were my _friend_ , and you were so _great_ , but, ah – Mikey.” He has Tom’s zipper down now, his jeans shoved beneath his hips and his palm on the front of Tom’s dark blue underwear, damp and strained over his cock. Tom has such a hair trigger, and Mike had no idea how much that would do it for him before all this, but holy shit, it does.

__

“What about now?” Mike takes Tom’s cock out, underwear snug underneath his balls as Mike starts jerking him off. “You still wanna blow me?”

__

“ _Yes_ ,” Tom whines, too loudly, and Mike puts his free hand over Tom’s mouth.

__

“Gotta be quiet, Tommy,” he reminds him, unable to stop himself from grinning. Tom’s eyes are wide, and he nods frantically behind Mike’s hand.

__

“Take these off,” he tells Tom as he pulls back a moment later, flicking the seam of his jeans. Tom listens.

__

Once they’re naked it takes several moment – longer than Mike would like – to arrange themselves in a way that mostly works, propped up against the wall with his legs spread and Tom on top of him, deliciously heavy and big. Tom’s thighs and knees start working immediately, pressing their hips together, his hand reaching between to stroke both of their dicks as best he can.

__

They’re hot and fully entwined and it’s already hard to be quiet, but Mike can’t help himself. As their hips piston together he drags the tips of his fingers down Tom’s back to the curve of his ass, pressing one in, dry and careful, against Tom’s hole.

__

The noise Tom makes is overwhelmed and goes straight to Mike’s dick.

__

“I wanna fuck you,” Mike says, chest raw. He wonders if that’s too much. Probably not. Probably doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s true. “Not now obviously, but…”

__

“ _Yeah_ ,” Tom interrupts. His eyes are shining and a little desperate. “I want that too.”

__

“When we get home,” Mike says, fingers gripping the curve of Tom’s ass and dragging him closer, not giving him any room to get away. “We can do that. And, like, the other way around too, and–” He has to cut himself off; the possibilities are suddenly too much to imagine. 

__

It must be the same for Tom, too, because he just gasps and fucks his hips harder, leaning in closer over Mike. Their cocks and hips are tight, sweaty and frantic as they press together, and that’s all it takes for Tom to gasp and come between them, Mike sucking a hot bite against Tom’s neck so he doesn’t shout in turn.

__

Tom takes just a moment to compose himself as his breathing steadies, and then immediately squirms down so his face is in Mike’s lap and wraps his lips around Mike’s dick, covered in his own come.

__

“Jesus _Christ_ , Tommy,” Mike whispers, not even hesitating as he grips at Tom’s hair and tugs a little.

__

Tom looks up, but doesn’t stop. Mike shoots off so hard his good knee jerks up, and by the time they compose themselves enough to lie down and pull the covers over top of them, Mike actually is a little worried about his parents overhearing.

__

“Wow,” Tom says eventually, smiling loose and stupid.

__

“Live up to your fantasy?” Mike asks, reeling Tom in closer.

__

“Uh, yeah. Definitely.” Tom flops his head back against the pillow, exhaling through a grin.

__

“You better cover that up in the morning when mom insists on making us breakfast,” Mike says, poking his fingers against the red mark on Tom’s jaw. It’s still warm and a little damp from Mike’s mouth.

__

“Jesus Christ,” Tom croaks out happily, pulling Mike closer. “Go turn out the light.”

__

-

__

Mike picks a stupid fight right around the first snow. He doesn’t mean to, but – does he?

__

He has to admit, he’s gotten pretty good at torpedoing himself over the course of the last year.

__

He doesn’t know if it’s the weather finally turning truly cold, or if he’s been pushing it too hard trying to keep up with Tom and the baby, or it’s just inexplicable shittiness, but his knee has been a mess for almost a week now. For the first two days he’d told himself it was fine, just an unpleasant but expected rough couple of days, but by now he can’t force the optimism, too worn down by pain and the indignity of not being able to do anything about it. All he wants to do is put his face against a pillow and scream. He can tell his unhappiness is wearing on Tom, too, who’s basically tiptoeing around the house at this point, flinching whenever Mike slams a cabinet or a door in frustration. Mike knows he should feel guilty, but the most he can manage is a detached understanding that the nasty satisfaction of making another person feel as bad as he does is probably a shitty way to treat someone, even – especially – if it’s someone as constantly patient as Tom.

__

On top of it all, Gracie has a bad cold, and she’s teething, and it turns out that’s basically the perfect storm for an extremely pissed off baby. By early evening on Monday, there’s three inches of snow on the ground, and the atmosphere in the cabin is so tense and miserable it might as well be a war zone.

__

Any other day, Mike would probably be able to handle the fact that the top part of Grace’s bottle won’t fucking screw onto the bottom part no matter _how fucking hard he tries_ , but today he’s just – done. It’s been ten minutes of trying and failing and Grace is _screaming_ in the living room and Mike’s leg throbs and Tom won’t stop hovering behind him silently, and it’s all Mike can do not to throw the bottle and its various nonfunctional pieces through the window when Tom comes up beside him again and finally asks, “Do you need help with that?”

__

He reaches out to take the bottle from Mike, and Mike snaps.

__

“I can _do_ it, Jesus!” he shouts, and tosses it down in the sink with an angry _thud_. “Just give me some fucking space, alright?”

__

“Hey,” Tom says, putting his hands up. He steps back, and Mike can practically see Tom steadying himself. “I know you’re frustrated, but – c’mon. Don’t talk to me like that.”

__

Mike knows that’s fair. He _knows_ it, knows he’s being an asshole, knows he ought to apologize. But the way Tom says it – careful and patient like you would to a kid who’s having a temper tantrum, or right out of a _how to resolve conflict_ tip sheet – makes the ugly anger in his chest flare up even brighter.

__

“I’m sorry,” he says, letting his voice go nastily patronizing and faux-sweet. “Thank you _so much_ , Tom, for rescuing me from this incredibly simple task that I _clearly_ am too stupid to figure out on my own.”

__

“Hey,” Tom says again, frowning even deeper. “You know that’s not–”

__

“But, you know, I guess since I can barely walk, I must not be able to put together the same damn plastic bottle I’ve been putting together for months now,” Mike continues. “I mean, thank God you’re here to be the hero, or else Grace and I would probably starve since we’re clearly so goddamn helpless.”

__

He spits it out, unable to hold it back, his heart racing a little.

__

“You know what?” Tom says, finally, fucking _finally_ losing his patience. It’s a horrible sort of relief. “Fine. If you wanna be an asshole, be an asshole.”

__

He turns away from Mike, stalking back into the living room to pick Grace up from the pack and play where she’s still wailing. He brings her into the kitchen, hands her wordlessly over to Mike, and picks up the bottle from bottom of the sink. He fits the lid on in about two seconds, wipes off the formula that’s sloshed over the side, and hands it to Mike without saying anything before turning and walking towards the front door. Even over Grace’s crying, Mike can hear Tom putting on his shoes and jacket, unlocking the door and closing it behind him, and getting into his car. The tires crunch down the driveway and then he’s gone, leaving Mike and Grace alone in the kitchen while she screams.

__

Tom stays gone from two hours. Grace eventually does stop crying, and only tries to shove Mike’s hand away a few times as he gives her the bottle. When she finally whimpers herself into exhaustion afterwards, Mike holds her close to his chest instead of putting her down to nap, unhappiness swirling so palpably in his stomach that he can’t really bear to let her go.

__

Is this how it will go forever? Will he always been just warped enough to ruin something good?

__

Grace sleeps restlessly, and he turns on the television as quiet as it will go, settling them both down gingerly on the couch. Outside, it’s snowing again, and getting dark. The lake is going to freeze over completely, soon. He winds up watching the snowflakes swirling through the illuminated patch the porch light throws out more than the TV.

__

Carol shows up to take a still-sleeping Grace home, eventually, and after that it’s just Mike, alone in the cabin like he was for so long. An hour later, he’s really starting to worry about Tom out on the roads – not that Tom doesn’t know how to drive in snowy weather, obviously, but the roads to the cabin can get tricky in the winter – when he hears Tom’s car pulling up the driveway like Mike summoned it with his thoughts.

__

He’s quiet as Tom comes in through the side door, kicking slush off his shoes and yanking off his gloves before he comes into the kitchen. Mike doesn’t know what to say – _sorry for the way I am, and the way I’m probably going to be for a long time_ , maybe? – so he says nothing instead.

__

If Tom is still angry, it doesn’t show up on his face. Mostly he just looks tired when he comes over to Mike and sits down on the couch next to him. Tom’s holding a plastic grocery bag, and Mike tilts his head at it. When he dumps it out, a new set of bottles tumble out and land on his lap.

__

“These ones snap together,” Tom say quietly, shrugging. “So maybe they’ll be easier than the twisty ones.”

__

Mike wants to cry. He holds out his hand, instead, and Tom takes it.

__

“I love you,” he tells Tom when they’re in bed later. He doesn’t know if that counts for enough, but he has to hope it does. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not fair to take it out on you when I’m frustrated. I feel like a jackass.”

__

“People pick stupid fights,” Tom reassures him. “I don’t expect you to be perfect, okay? I just want you to know you can talk to me or tell me you need space or something when you’re frustrated.”

__

“Ugh,” Mike says, turning over to bury his face against Tom’s shoulder. Tom immediately wraps his arm around Mike, tucking him close. “Do you have to be so understanding and nice? It makes the rest of us look like assholes in comparison.”

__

“Uh,” Tom says, the hint of a smile audible in his voice. “Sorry?”

__

“Can you just say something mean,” Mike mumbles, smiling a little now too. “So we’re even.”

__

“That’s not how it works,” Tom says, but then adds: “You have always been kinda bratty, though. So I’m used to it.”

__

“Hey,” Mike protests, just on principle, and then bites Tom’s shoulder gently. “I mean, fair, but.”

__

Tom just kisses the top of his head. “Do you want the heating pad for your leg tonight?” When Mike hesitates and then nods, Tom goes and gets it from the cabinet in the bathroom, plugging it in and arranging it on Mike’s knee with such practiced ease and lack of fuss that it chips away that last nauseous feeling of uncertainty lingering around Mike’s stomach.

__

“I’m gonna read for a few if the light won’t bug you,” Tom says. Mike shakes his head, and he’s out before Tom even gets his iPad unlocked.

__

-

__

“Hey,” Tom asks him over breakfast. Mike has PT soon, and they’re getting lunch afterward. “Can I talk to you about something? Nothing bad,” he adds when Mike presumably makes a face. “Mom just wanted to know if I could come home for a couple days over American Thanksgiving. James is gonna be there, and he’s bringing his new girlfriend since she has a break from school.”

__

“Oh,” Mike says, frowning a little, although not unhappily. “Yeah, of course, man.” It’s the right answer, and automatic, but when Mike turns it over in his head he realizes – yeah, he means it. “It’s been way too long since you saw them.”

__

Tom smiles, clearly relieved that Mike is taking this so in stride. “Yeah. I mean, I’m glad I’m here, but it’ll be nice to see them.” He chews on his bottom lip for a moment, clearly not finished, but Mike just waits until he’s ready. “They said you’re welcome to come too, but I said I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to make it, and that I’d check. Do you think you’d want to?”

__

Mike considers it, and frowns. He thinks he really is okay with Tom going, but when he thinks about going _too_ – that starts to feel like too much. Too vulnerable, too overwhelming. He’s gone to visit Tom’s family a ton of times before, obviously, but that was a different Mike. He’s not sure that he’s ready to usurp the Mike they knew with his new self. Someday, but not yet.

__

His impulse, though, is to lie and say that of course he can manage it. Because if he couldn’t, then it would basically be and admission of exactly how fucked-up he is. It’s almost out of his mouth, agreeing to go just to prove that he’s not too ruined even for that, but he stops himself. He takes a breath, thinks about what Jeremy would say. Would Tom really want him to go if it would be too much?

__

“I think maybe not yet,” Mike says carefully, looking for any signs of disappointment or pity on Tom’s face. But Tom just nods like that’s totally cool, and then seems to notice Mike’s coffee cup is empty, because he picks it up and takes it to the kitchen to refill it.

__

“Sounds good,” he says. “Another time, maybe.” He brings Mike’s mug back, and then glances down a little sheepishly. “I did want to check with you, though. It’s okay that I tell them while I’m there? About, like. Us?”

__

Mike’s heart flutters a little. “You want to?” Mike knows Tom’s sort of hinted at it when he talks to his mom on the phone, but it probably does warrant an actual conversation, saying the words out loud instead of just letting her put the pieces together on her own.

__

“Uh, yeah, dude,” Tom says, that little _you’re so stupid_ smile that Mike loves more than feels reasonable spreading across Tom’s face. “I keep telling you, I’ll fuckin’... yell it from the top of the CN Tower or something if you’d be cool with that.”

__

“God. That is so embarrassing for you,” Mike says, blushing.

__

The day before Tom’s set to leave, the anxiety tries to set in. Mike looks at Tom toasting their bagels at breakfast and thinks, _it’s a trick. He’s leaving for good_.

__

He knows that’s stupid, and not true. If anything, this visit’s been a long time coming; Tom’s been up here with Mike for _months_ now. He hadn’t gone home for real Thanksgiving, and Mike feels a twist of guilt when he thinks about how much of Tom’s time Mike has monopolized since he turned up. All of it, basically. Even with the lockout, Tom has other friends, not to mention his family, and he’d definitely have gone to see them a long time ago if not for Mike.

__

He tries not to dwell on that, though. Jeremy would tell him that Tom’s an adult and he makes his own choices and determines his own priorities just like Mike does. Which is – moderately reassuring, if not completely.

__

Either way, the gnawing guilt doesn’t do much to change how Mike feels kind of sick to his stomach as he watches Tom pack up his suitcase. Part of Mike wants to punish himself for being so selfish of Tom, and that other small part is still trying to convince him that when Tom goes, it’s going to be for good.

__

_That’s irrational_ , Mike thinks slowly and clearly. _He’s going to his parents for a few days, and he’ll come back, and it will be fine. You talked about this. You don’t have any reason to doubt it._

__

“Do you have my gray sweatshirt? With the–” Tom makes vague gesture on his chest, and Mike knows exactly which ones he means. He’d stolen it the other day.

__

“Yeah,” Mike says, and instead of begging Tom not to leave him, ever, probably for the rest of their lives, stands up to go find it in the laundry room.

__

Tom makes breakfast before he leaves the next morning, and Mike is gripping his coffee mug in one hand and his cane in the other when he follows Tom to the front door to see him off.

__

“And you’ll be back Sunday?” Mike asks as Tom pulls his keys out of the pocket of his coat. He _knows_ he will be, they’ve talked through the plans and they’re written down in Mike’s notebook and on the calendar they have hanging on the fridge, which makes Mike feel more like his mother than he’d like but also substantially more in control, being able to see the schedule laid out in front of him. He _knows_ , but he still wants to – check.

__

“Yeah,” says Tom, pulling him close and pressing a clumsy kiss to his temple. “Yeah. I’ll be home then.”

__

-

__

Tom keeps his promise, and his car pulls up on Sunday afternoon. It’s cold and gray outside, and Mike hasn’t ventured out of the house at all since Tom left except for therapy. For once, though, it hadn’t felt like hiding, or retreating. It had been that kind of solitude that feels cozy and indulgent; when Mike had pulled on an extra sweater and got the fireplace going that morning, he’d thought, _this is nice_. 

__

So he’s standing in his thickest pair of socks in the kitchen, trying to decide if he wants to put a slug of Baileys in his next cup of coffee just because he can, when Tom comes through the door. There’s snow on his shoulders and slush on his shoes and he all but bounds over to Mike like an overexcited puppy, stopping just in front of him to lean in and kiss the edge of his mouth.

__

“Hey,” Mike says, smiling like an idiot. “You’re home.”

__

“Yep. You miss me?” Tom asks, grinning stupidly right back at him, and Mike thinks, _God, yes_.

__

“I fucked up the stove trying to make oatmeal,” he says instead, pointing at the burned-on crust of almond milk and steel-cut oats. He’d gotten distracted watching a squirrel fight out on the icy railing of the back deck while he was cooking breakfast the day before, and it had boiled over until Mike had sworn under his breath and picked his way over from the window to pull it off the burner.

__

“And you forgot where we keep the sponges?” Tom asks, a goofy, teasing smile on his face.

__

“Yep. Sure did.”

__

“Could have texted me and I would have told you.” Tom pulls him in by the cuffs of his sweatshirt, wraps him in his arm. “Hey. C’mere.”

__

Mike goes, kisses him for real and thinks, _he’s home_.

__

-

__

The small circle of people who know about them expands, very gradually. Mike’s family, and Tom’s, who Mike figures must have guessed anyway, even before Tom went home.

__

Jeremy knows too, obviously. Mike’s long past deluding himself into believing that he can navigate major life changes on his own; history has shown him exactly how well that’s worked out. He tells Jeremy about it when they decide to try this out for real, just to make sure he’s not being an idiot or missing something important. He tells Jeremy about their stupid fight, and gets told how not to be such an asshole next time he starts to feel self-destructive. It’s not _fun_ , exactly, to have to ask another adult how to be a good boyfriend, but it’s better than the alternative. He can bear that much for Tom.

__

And Mike’s not stupid, either. He knows that their bubble is exactly that – one that will inevitably pop.

__

No lockout has ever lasted forever. The further they get into late winter, the more aware Mike is that they’re running on borrowed time. The league may or may not get it together for a shortened season, but even if they don’t, it can only last through the summer.

__

Mike was never very superstitious before, at least compared to other players, but now he starts looking for signs. _If we get one last big snow, they’ll finalize a deal soon_ , he thinks over breakfast one morning in January. _If the lake stays frozen another week, they’ll reach terms_.

__

It snows overnight; the lake stays frozen.

__

According to Jeremy, there’s nothing particularly wrong with this, which surprises Mike. He’d been sure Jeremy was going to frown and scribble something on a notepad when Mike mentioned it – a big, underlined _crazy_ or something – but he just nodded like that was normal. “Magical thinking,” apparently, can be a “useful mechanism for exerting a sense of control in an uncontrollable world,” so long as Mike doesn’t put _too_ much stock in it.

__

“Either way,” Jeremy says, refolding his legs. “It sounds like you’re cognizant of the fact that the future is going to bring some changes. Do you want to talk about what those might look like?”

__

Mike bites his lip, looks out the window at the gray sky and flurry of snow that’s been falling all morning, and says, “Yeah, okay.”

__

So they talk. They talk about what Mike wants, about what Tom might want. They talk about how Mike will be able to handle it, when hockey becomes an active part of his life again – which is what will happen, no matter what, if he’s with Tom. They talk about support resources and boundaries and realistic expectations, and then Jeremy tells him to go home and talk to Tom about it all, too.

__

It drains just about every last ounce of energy from Mike, in the end, but he does. He talks, Tom talks, and Mike knows that when it inevitably happens, he’ll be as ready as he can be.

__

Which turns out to be a good thing.

__

Not too long into the new year, Tom starts texting a lot more, and Mike’s pretty sure Tom would tell him who with if Mike asked, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he really need to. He can tell from Tom’s careful squint and the way he types and re-types sometimes before sending it that it’s official team stuff. Maybe his agent, or Caps staff. When it’s Tom’s family, or the team group text, Tom doesn’t bother being that careful; that’s only professional Tom, always trying so hard to be taken seriously, hating being written off as a dumb meathead, at least with everyone who isn’t team. Mike remembers with a little twist of amusement how borderline incoherent they all were in the team group text, a nonsense mess of multiple languages and typos and inside jokes.

__

No one ever said hockey players were highly literate.

__

Jimmy hasn’t given him any other league updates after that first warning, way back before Tom arrived, presumably because he figures that now Tom can fill Mike in as much as necessary. To his credit, Tom does, at least generally, if a little cautiously. He tells Mike when a meeting between the league and the player’s association that everyone had thought might lead to a deal falls through, for example, and it doesn’t even come with a twist of ugly feelings. Mike’s not exactly interested in hearing the details, so mostly he nods sympathetically and then asks Tom if he wants chili for dinner, but he goes to bed feeling bizarrely close to a capable adult; one who can talk about hockey without having a panic attack, and one whose neuroses are slowly settling enough that he can be a good friend – a good _boyfriend_.

__

So it’s not hugely surprising, in the end, when Tom crawls into bed beside him one night and says, quietly in the dark, “I think it’s gonna end soon.”

__

“Yeah?” Mike asks. He takes off the glasses he’s had to start wearing more and more and puts them on the bedside table, making room for Tom up against him. “Well, that’s good.”

__

“I guess so,” Tom mumbles. “I mean, no. It is. It’s just… a lot. I’m happy here.”

__

“You’re happy playing, too,” Mike reminds him, keeping his voice level. This isn’t about him. It doesn’t matter what the parallels are like. This is about Tom, and Mike can keep it that way. He can support the person he loves.

__

“I know. And I miss it. Is… that okay to say?” Tom asks, suddenly hesitant.

__

Mike just nods briefly, hoping Tom will leave it at that. Mercifully, he does.

__

“But I’m gonna miss being here with you,” Tom says, curling even tighter around Mike. It’s like he’s trying to fuse them together, make them one form that can’t be separated. Mike thinks he’d be okay with that.

__

“But we’ll still be… you know,” Mike says awkwardly. “Together. Just not… _together_.” Tom snorts a laugh against Mike’s shoulder. “Shut up, you know what I mean.”

__

He knows Tom does. They’ve talked about it enough by now. It doesn’t need to be said again.

__

“I’ll miss you being here too,” he says instead, because that’s true.

__

-

__

Two days later, Tom smiles grimly at Mike after lunch and passes him his phone without saying anything. He has to be back in Washington by the end of the week.

__

-

__

Maybe it’s because they’ve already done this once before, albeit in miniature, that it’s not so bad; Tom packing up his suitcase to go somewhere, and leave Mike behind. The bag is bigger than the one he’d taken home for American Thanksgiving, though. Instead of a borrowed duffle it’s the enormous suitcase he’d first shown up with, which until now had been buried in the back of the spare closet. Mike sits on their bed and helps Tom fold up basically all his clothes, and some of Mike’s own to boot. They’ve pretty much been rotating t-shirts and sweatshirts and socks for months now, and trying to remember if these are his own Adidas sweats or Tom’s makes Mike feel a little nauseous. He folds them up, and figured if it turns out they are his, that just means that Tom will have to come back, eventually. To return them.

__

He trusts that Tom will come back, though, sweatpants or not. It surprises him, honestly, how Mike can sense the presence of this looming thing that six months ago would have spiralled him into something oily and bleak for weeks without doing just that. Now he can look at it and think: _Tom says he’ll be back, so he’ll be back_ , and for the most part, believe it.

__

It doesn’t hurt to have the sweatpants as a backup, though.

__

“I love you,” Tom says for the tenth time before he leaves for the airport. He won’t fucking _go_ , finding new reasons to linger, and he’s going to miss his flight if he keeps it up.

__

“I know, dummy,” Mike says. Someone here has to be the competent one. It’s a still new thrill that for once, that can actually be Mike. “I love you too, and you’re gonna miss me and I’m gonna miss you and blah blah blah. Good news is it’s a short season so you’ll have to come back soon no matter what.”

__

“See what happens if someone tries to stop me,” Tom says, and finally picks up his suitcase. “I’ll call you when I land, okay?”

__

“Okay,” Mike says, nudging them both towards the door. He has a water bottle in one hand, and hands it to Tom as they go. “For the road.”

__

Mike stays in the doorway while Tom puts his suitcase in the trunk, and then comes back. It looks like he’s going to say something, probably something emotional and fraught, and suddenly Mike just – doesn’t need to do that. He smiles instead. “See you soon,” he says, and kisses Tom for a long moment before pushing him towards his car.

__

-

__

Mike had figured that once Tom left, the cabin would go back to the way it had been before he ever showed up.

__

It doesn’t, though. Too much has changed for that to be possible, maybe. 

__

The first day is a little weird, but it’s doable. So is the second, and two days turns into a week easily, and after that he stops counting. It’s easier than he’d thought it would be, not to tend to a countdown and just know, instead, that the distance, the empty house, is impermanent.

__

It’s quieter, of course, and a little bit lonelier. But Grace still comes over three times a week, and her little face when she sees him is enough to get him through the shittiest days. She’s going to start walking soon, and Mike’s determined to catch it on video when she does, so that he can show Tom.

__

He finds his own version of their routine; appointments, errands, babysitting. He makes lists every day, and breakfast, too. He Skypes Tom in the afternoons, props Gracie up on his lap if she’s around so Tom can coo stupidly at her and call her his smart little princess until Mike whines about not getting enough attention. He starts going to dinner with his folks every week, not because he has to but because he _wants_ to, and he has lunch out at the sandwich place between his therapists and his PT’s office often enough that the staff start to learn his name and make small talk about shit like the weather.

__

He doesn’t watch Tom’s games, but when he checks the scores, he only feels the barest twinge of hurt. He misses Tom, but he doesn’t feel ruined by it.

__

Mike realizes he doesn’t feel like half a person anymore; like someone who’s been robbed of something. For the first time in so long, he’s someone who has something to look towards. Suddenly, he has a future again.

__

-

__

There’s a moment, in last stall of the airport bathroom, where Mike doesn’t think he’s going to be able to do it.

__

He hasn’t felt such an acute clutch of panic in long enough that it actually takes him a minute to place it. He’s sitting in the terminal, waiting to board, his Starbucks balanced on his good knee and his cane resting carefully next to him, and all of a sudden his heart is racing. The announcements on the intercom are too loud, there are too many people around him, and his eyes won’t look away from the board by the gate, _Destination: Washington National_ glowing ominously.

__

He can’t do this. He was so stupid to think he could.

__

He stumbles to the bathroom as quickly as he can manage, resting his forehead against the cool metal of the stall door for a long moment, trying to find his breath.

__

_About to board, freaking out just a little can you just like say something nice,_ he texts Tom once he find some composure. Tom answers almost immediately.

__

_Babe i am sooo proud of you no matter what, and even if it sucks you’ll be here soon and i can’t wait to see you!!!!!_ Right after, a picture comes though. _Also heres a weird duck I saw earlier._

__

_That’s a goose dumbass_ , Mike answers, smiling a little. He’s still rattled, but it doesn’t feel quite so imminently dangerous.

__

He takes the spare Ativan in his wallet, and goes back to his seat in the terminal. He boards last, keeps the window shade down, and wakes up on the ground.

__

Tom’s car – his real car, not the rental Mike had gotten so used to over all the months at the lake – is waiting in the arrivals area. He’s been texting Mike since he’d landed and taken his phone off airplane mode, threatening to park and come in so he can help Mike with his bag, but Mike had just said _you better not_. Tom had listened, thankfully.

__

“Holy shit, I missed you,” Tom says once Mike’s in the car, both his hands coming up to Mike’s face so he can pull him in and kiss him.

__

Mike’s chest unlocks, just a bit. There had been a little, horrible part of him that couldn’t help from thinking that despite it all they’d wind up jolting back to past versions of themselves the second they were both in D.C. again, but – no. Tom is kissing him with that ferocity and full-body commitment that Mike’s always been so fucked up for. It’s hard to believe that now it’s focused so completely on him.

__

“Okay,” Tom says when he finally pulls back, the car behind them honking. “Okay. We should, uh. Drive.”

__

He shifts his lap conspicuously in his seat, a little out of breath, and Mike can’t repress his smile.

__

They drive to a street in Arlington near enough to where they lived before to feel _almost_ familiar, but it’s blurred by time and distance and whatever else has bloomed inside Mike since the last time they were here. He doesn’t recognize the building they pull up to, but the gesture of Tom fumbling around for his remote opener to the garage is so routine it jumpstarts something nostalgic in Mike’s stomach. He waits for it to turn bitter, but it never does.

__

“So,” Tom says once they get upstairs, gesturing around a little nervously and then shoving his hands awkwardly into the pockets of his jeans. “This is it.”

__

Tom’s new apartment is nice, in that way that’s bland and mostly empty. It has real furniture, but hardly anything personal in it. It’s basically the complete opposite of their old apartment.

__

He winces a little when he thinks that. Mike’s still not even sure what happened with the lease on their old place, just that Tom had crashed with Burky after Mike disappeared, and now he has this apartment, which feels bland and boring and about the same as a hundred hotel rooms Mike’s been in. It makes him feel sort of sad for Tom.

__

“It’s big,” Mike offers, because he can’t think of what else to say about it.

__

Tom hunches his shoulders. “I dunno. It’s fine, but – I dunno.”

__

He takes Mike’s suitcase into the bedroom, points out the bathroom and the kitchen and everything that Mike absolutely could have discovered on his own, but he lets Tom give him the tour anyway, mostly because it seems like Tom needs to. When there’s nothing else to see, they sit on the fancy gray sofa, and Mike pulls out his phone to order them something to eat. It seems like food is one of the things Tom doesn’t keep very much of in the house.

__

He’d expected himself to be more affected by seeing where Tom was living without him, but it feels strangely fine. Maybe it’s how impersonal the whole place feels, just a temporary stopping point instead of a something more, something Mike missed. That makes it easier.

__

If anything, out of the two of them, _Tom_ seems to be the one that’s getting steadily more frazzled as the night goes on. After the third time Tom asks if Mike wants something to drink – which he’s already said yes to two times, and now has bottles of water and Gatorade in front of him as a result – Mike reaches out and grabs his wrist, pulling Tom down to sit beside him over the sofa if only to get him to stop pacing.

__

“You’re freaking out a little,” he says gently. Tom makes a face and then tips over, resting his head in Mike’s lap. He flexes his fingers, and then carefully scratches them through Tom’s hair. It’s still so long. Mike loves it.

__

“Sorry,” Tom mumbles into his leg. “I’ll try and chill out. I just, you know. Want this to all be… okay. You being here, and everything, and… I dunno. Is it okay?”

__

Mike twirls one finger through a strand of Tom’s hair, leaving a little ringlet behind when he pulls it away. He marvels for a moment, that this person is _his_. “Hey, man. I’m good. It’s kind of weird, but I can handle it. And I can call Jeremy if I start to melt down.”

__

Tom tips his head up to look at Mike. “I know,” he says, sucking his lower lip into his mouth. “I don’t mean to seem like… I dunno, I don’t think you can handle it or anything. I just want to make it as easy as possible, you know?”

__

“I know,” Mike says, honestly. “But you have other shit to worry about, too, and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could handle it. So just. Chill out, okay? Dinner’s gonna be here soon, and then we’ll go to bed and you can get up in time for morning skate.”

__

Tom nods easily, tractable as ever when given instruction. “Can I suck your dick before we go to sleep?” he asks after a moment.

__

Mike doesn’t flush, but it comes close. Jesus. “Uh. Yeah. I’ll see if I can manage that,” he says. “Only because I’m such a good boyfriend, though.”

__

He rolls his eyes as he says it, but Tom nods his agreement all the same. Jesus. Mike loves a wonderful idiot.

__

-

__

Mike had been the one to suggest coming to watch some of the playoffs in person, back when he had first bought his plane ticket, but they revisit the idea just before the first game the Caps are due to play – a roadie, which would require a plane ticket and an extra hotel room and all that – and Mike just… can’t. 

__

“I’m sorry,” he says as Tom throws stuff in his travel bag. The scene is familiar by now, and a little easier for it each time. “I’ll watch on TV, though.”

__

Tom looks up, a roll of athletic tape in one hand. “You don’t have to,” he says. “For real, I don’t mind. I’m just happy you’re here.”

__

It must speak volumes for the quality of Mike’s therapy that he _believes_ Tom.

__

They’re looking for Tom’s lucky Adidas slides when Mike’s phone buzzes. He’s expecting it to be a text from his mom, since the trip to D.C. has turned her extra hovery, but when he sees the name on the screen he almost drops his phone.

__

“What’s up?” Tom asks after Mike clearly frowns at his phone for longer than is normal.

__

“Uh. Nicky asked if I wanted to get lunch while I’m in town,” Mike reports cautiously, turning the words over in his head again as he says them out loud. When he looks up, he can see the excitement on Tom’s face, as well as the way Tom immediately tries to wipe it away, presumably so he doesn’t pressure Mike.

__

“Yeah? What do you think?” he asks instead.

__

Mike considers. Anyone else, and he knows exactly what the answer would be. There’s a reason he’s not going to the games, even just to sit in the press box or something. He knows he’d have to see everyone, and the thought of the team – everyone he left behind, and even worse, the new faces he doesn’t know – descending on him, even carefully, is just. Way too much. At least for now.

__

_Progress means respecting healthy boundaries, not ignoring them_ , he repeats to himself, something Jeremy had said the week before. Mike’s still trying to internalize that; that he doesn’t have to prove that he’s just the same as he’s always been, because he _isn’t_.

__

So the games had been too much, but – but maybe just seeing Nicke on his own would be doable. A challenge, but not impossible. Out of all his old teammates, Nicke was probably the smartest choice for Mike to see first, the least likely to fuss or act weird or anything. Mike would probably sweat through the whole thing, because he still doesn’t think he’s shaken the impulse to impress Nicke, but – but he can probably manage.

__

“I think I want to try,” he tells Tom slowly, and lets himself be engulfed in a bone-crushing hug in response, pinching Tom’s ribs when he starts not being able to breathe.

__

The day before the first playoff game, Mike takes an extra painkiller in the morning and meets Nicke at a Mexican place a few streets away from Tom’s apartment. He’s pretty sure it’s new, or at least he’s never been there. He wonders if Nicke suggested it because of that.

__

He’s nervous as all hell as the hostess takes him back to a table in the rear of the restaurant, wondering if maybe he’d bitten off more than he can chew. But even if he has, it’s too late to do anything about it now. Nicke is already there, zipped all the way up in a gray sweatshirt with his back to the wall, poking at a bowl of tortilla chips and doing that thing where he somehow takes up more space than expected and blends into the background at the same time. Mike’s always been sort of jealous of that skill. He’s always either too conspicuous or winds up disappearing into nothing, it seems.

__

Nicke glances up when Mike approaches, and just barely smiles.

__

“Hey Mike,” he says mildly, so calm they might as well have seen each other just yesterday.

__

“Nicky,” Mike says, surprised by the force of the comfort that hits him. Nicke doesn’t stand up to hug him or anything, just kicks a little at the chair across from him and nods for Mike to sit. He doesn’t say anything at all about Mike’s limp, or his cane.

__

“They tried to bring guacamole,” Nicke says, still pronouncing the word not quite right. “And I told them no, so if you want that you gotta order it yourself.”

__

He looks basically the same as he did last time Mike saw him – his hair is a little longer, a little more pointed in the face, maybe – and still exudes that same placidity, like he’s taking the entire world in with one slow blink and knows exactly what to do with it. Mike’s so violently glad to see him it’s startling.

__

“You’re still a picky fucking eater, huh?” Mike says, laughing.

__

Nicke shrugs, flattening out his smile as much as he can. “I know what I like.”

__

When their waitress comes he orders a cheese quesadilla with nothing else on it, and Mike only hesitates a little before reciting the team’s old party line: that if Nicke wanted a grilled cheese, they could have just stayed home. Nicke scowls and flicks the wrapper of his straw at him. If Mike had any doubts about coming, he forgets them then. Nicke isn’t some emblem of everything Mike’s lost, a walking reminder of all the shit that’s happened over the last year. He’s just Nicke, same as always.

__

“Alex wanted to come,” Nicke says, using his fork to fish a miniscule piece of red onion out of the salsa.

__

Mike doesn’t mean to grimace, at least visibly, but of course he does, and of course Nicke sees it. “Sorry,” he says, and Nicke just snorts.

__

“Why? I told him no for a reason.”

__

Mike tilts his head. “Yeah?”

__

“Alex is…” Nicke’s face does that soft, privately amused thing it only does when he’s talking about Ovi. “A lot. Not everyone wants to be jumped and slobbered on all the time, you know?”

__

Mike’s torn between embarrassment and appreciation. He shrugs in compromise, and says a tiny prayer for their food arriving then.

__

“I do wanna see him,” Mike says later. “Eventually. The rest of the boys, too. It’s just… you know. Everything.” Does Nicke need to hear exactly how bad Mike had been fucked up, and for how long? How precipitous any progress still feels sometimes, something that could come crashing down with a single wrong step?

__

“It was just with... everything that happened,” he starts again, but then doesn’t know what to say. Maybe he’s said enough. His hand goes to his knee instinctively.

__

“I’m not gonna make you talk about it,” Nicke tells him evenly. “We can just eat.”

__

“Well,” Mike says, squirming a little. He’s reminded of how badly he always wanted to impress Nicke; it looks like that hasn’t exactly faded with time. He doesn’t _want_ to talk about it, particularly, but he also wants to show Nicke that he _can_. “I’m doing okay, now, though. So if you want to… I don’t know. You can ask me stuff.”

__

Nicke raises an eyebrow at him. “Do you want me to?”

__

Mike considers, and then nods.

__

“Okay. You and Tom are good?”

__

“We are,” Mike says, unable to stop himself from smiling. That wasn’t so bad.

__

“And your leg is doing better?”

__

Mike shuts his eyes for a second. “It is,” he says finally. “They – they don’t think I’ll probably walk, uh, normal again. But. I can walk at least. So. Can’t really complain.”

__

Nicke makes a flat, unimpressed face at that. “You can’t complain that your career ended?”

__

“It’s the nature of the game,” Mike says, poking his food with his fork. “It could have happened to anybody.”

__

“Okay,” Nicke says evenly. “But it happened to you, yeah?”

__

Mike has to set down his fork. “I – yeah,” he admits. “It did.”

__

“So there you go,” Nicke says, shrugging. “Anyway. You’re a nanny now? That’s what Andre says.”

__

Mike tries to scowl, because Nicke is definitely teasing him a little, in that quiet Nicke way, but smiles instead. “Yeah. I’ve been watching my niece, Gracie. She’s… awesome.”

__

Nicke grins at him, and pretends to roll his eyes. “Okay. So show me the pictures, then.”

__

Mike already has his phone out before Nicke finishes the sentences. Showing off Grace, _that_ he can do.

__

“So she got _super_ mad at the snow when we took her out in it for the first time,” Mike says, holding his phone out so Nicke can see. “Like, just _screamed_ at it. Not even cried, just, like, _yelled_.”

__

-

__

In the end, the Caps get bumped at home in game six of the second round.

__

No surprise there, really; the biggest shock is Mike’s overwhelming disappointment for them. He’d braced himself for something ugly to well up in him again – that nasty joy of knowing they’ve lost something they wanted the same as him – but it never comes. He’d count it as a victory if it didn’t feel so extraordinarily devastating to see Tom afterward, coming out of the player’s exit at Verizon to where Mike’s waiting in the car to pick him up, every inch of him radiating despair.

__

They don’t say anything on the drive home.

__

When they get back to Tom’s apartment and the door shuts behind them, Tom sits down on the couch, hunches his big shoulders up and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. He’s not making any noise, but Mike knows he’s crying anyway.

__

Mike waits, trying to scout out what he’s feeling, bracing himself for something gnarled and selfish; all he finds, though, is simple, unadorned sadness. Seeing Tom hurting, it turns out, is still one of the worst things he can think of.

__

He presses his nose against the top of Tom’s head for a second, wishing he could do something. “I’m gonna get you something to eat,” he says eventually.

__

In the kitchen, he reheats the half a pizza left from the night before (in the oven, the way Tom likes it) and makes a milkshake with the strawberry ice cream he finds in the freezer. No such thing as diet plans when you’ve just gotten bounced.

__

He figures Tom could probably use the privacy, at least for a few more minutes, so Mike contents himself to watch the blender and rack his brain for something, anything that might be the least bit helpful. What had helped when _he_ was the one rubbed raw from the undignified hurt of getting knocked out too early?

__

Nothing, really. It just sucks, and the best you can do is grit your teeth through it and know that eventually you’ll come out the other side. For Mike, at least having Tom there to go through the shittiness with was the best consolation.

__

Mike snorts a little, imagining what Jeremy would say to that. _Do you see any parallels there?_

__

The oven dings.

__

It takes two trips to get the pizza, two beers, and the milkshake out to Tom, who’s only shifted around on the couch enough to tuck his feet underneath himself. Mike arranges everything on the glass and chrome coffee table (he’s one hundred percent positive it came with the apartment; Tom definitely didn’t pick it out himself), along with a couple of aspirin.

__

“For your shoulder,” he says softly. Tom’s been favoring his right side after a hit in the first round. Mike noticed, even without Tom saying anything.

__

“Thanks,” Tom says hoarsely. His eyes are red, and Mike doesn’t know what to do for him, so he just nudges the food closer.

__

“You should eat.”

__

Tom obeys, leaning forward to brace himself on his knees as he takes a bite of the pizza. Mike guesses he’s probably not even tasting it, but at least it’s something. Tom’s good at following instructions.

__

Mike tries not to stare too pitifully at Tom while he eats, knowing full well how fucking nuts that drives _him_ , but it’s still tempting. It _sucks_ , watching Tom hurt so visibly and knowing there’s fuck all he can do about it.

__

It gives him a new pang of sympathy for Tom. If this was what the last six months with Mike had been like for Tom… Jesus. He must be a saint.

__

Tom sets his plate down on his knees once he finishes eating, and then just stares down at it vacantly.

__

“What else do you need?” Mike asks carefully, taking the plate away. Tom looks up at him, then, and smiles, or at least does his best impression of it. He still has that look of a kicked puppy in his eyes that undermines its believability.

__

“I’m alright,” he says, and Mike doesn’t roll his eyes at the blatant lie.

__

“C’mere,” he says, and yanks Tom closer. For as big as he is, Tom goes easily, letting Mike curl him into his chest. He rests a hand on Tom’s back, letting his other thumb brush gently over the curve of Tom’s bicep. His chin rests on top of Tom’s head, and he kisses his hair, still a little damp from the shower.

__

“Sorry,” Tom says. It comes out muffled and a little wet against Mike’s t-shirt. “I know I’m being… it’s not like someone died or anything. I shouldn’t be this…” 

__

“Y’know, you’re the one who’s always giving me lectures about how ‘it’s okay to not be okay’ and ‘your feelings are valid’ and shit,” Mike says quietly into Tom’s hair. “So you know that applies to you too, right?”

__

Tom exhales on a shudder. “I guess so.” Mike digs his chin against Tom’s head. “Ow, okay. Yes. I know.” He pulls back a little to look up at Mike again. “I hate this,” he says miserably.

__

“Me too,” Mike says, a little surprised by his own vehemence. “So let’s just, fuckin’ – hate it together. And then go to bed, and get up tomorrow and figure out what to do next, and just. Try again next year.”

__

Tom smiles at that, just slightly but _honestly_. Mike loves his stupid face so much. Everything else about him, too. And when he thinks about that, about where he was a year ago compared to now, about his ability to say things about the future and _mean_ them, it still feels unlikely, almost impossible, but steady, too. It’s unfamiliar terrain, but no longer in a way that seems like it might slip out from under his feet any moment.

__

“Okay?” he asks Tom when he doesn’t answer; he’s just making a sweet, dopey face up at Mike, something gentle shining through even as he’s puffy and snotty and covered in scrapes and bruises.

__

“Okay,” Tom agrees, and leans back into Mike with a sigh.

__

-

__

Tom sleeps late the next morning, and Mike’s happy to let him. It’s almost noon when he stumbles out of the bedroom, his sweatpants falling low on his hips and his hair a total mess.

__

Mike has breakfast – probably brunch, by now – in plastic boxes set on on the chrome island in the kitchen. Cooking breakfast is still Tom’s thing, but Mike can at least manage ordering breakfast sandwiches and smoothies on Postmates.

__

Tom smiles wanly at him, and eats without talking, but halfway through he reaches across the island and silently rests his hand in Mike’s. They finish eating like that, quiet, their hands linked.

__

“So,” Mike says that evening when the sun is starting to set. “Did you, uh, wanna maybe try and figure out our next move? Like, for the summer, and… after.” He scratches the back of his neck self-consciously, still not exactly acclimated to being the one prompting discussions about the future.

__

Tom exhales, a little heavy, a little thoughtful. “What do you think? You want to go to back to the lake?”

__

“Honestly, dude? I think I’m sick of the cabin,” Mike says, crinkling his nose a little when he smiles self-consciously. Tom just laughs at him. “Maybe we can go for like, a week or something, but…”

__

Tom smiles. “Yeah. I think that sounds good.”

__

“Toronto, maybe,” Mike says after a moment. “So you can train. Or… maybe here. I dunno.”

__

“You’d be okay with that?” Tom asks. “Being back in D.C.?”

__

Mike shrugs, trying for nonchalance. “I’m back in D.C. now, aren’t I?”

__

“Yeah, but. More permanently than that?”

__

Mike shrugs, holding his shoulders up around his ears. “Well. Like. You’re here. And I don’t wanna… not be with you, so. Yeah. I’ll probably be here in the fall.”

__

Mike might be imagining it, but he thinks the tips of Tom’s ears go a little pink. “Only if you’re sure,” he says, but the soft pleased expression on his face is enough. Mike’s sure.

__

“So maybe Toronto for the summer,” Mike offers. That – seems smart. An in-between, still close to home, enough to ease him into a new world. “And then… you know.”

__

The thing is, though, neither of them know. Maybe there’ll just be another fucking lockout. Maybe Tom will get traded to like, L.A. or something. Mike knows intimately that just about everything out there is tenuous, hockey not least of all. But it’s hard to argue with the fact that Tom seems in this with him, wherever it goes. If it’s back to the cabin, or to another city, or to D.C. They can carve it out together, whatever their lives look like. Whatever they want them to look like.

__

Mike remembers, months ago, when Tom asked what made him happy, and he’d said Grace. That’s still true, but it must be more than that. It’s having someone who sees him, who loves him, and who he loves back fiercely, doubly. If he can hang onto that – if, maybe, someday, him and Tom can have their own version of that family, someone like Grace, chubby-cheeked and in awe of the impossible world around her, from the sand on the beach to the horror of pureed sweet potatoes – that’s not nothing. That’s something worth enduring the uncertainty for; knowing that whatever comes, they can face it together.

__

Outside, the sun is slanting in orange and quiet. Mike thinks he’ll open the windows tonight, sleep with them open, even if it’s noisy outside. “Yeah,” Tom says, wrapping an arm around him. “Yeah, I know.”

__





End file.
